How to Fix Terraria’s Mage Class

How to Fix Terraria’s Mage Class

mage is far and away my favorite class sometimes people ask me why well it’s just because I like it if mage is a class option in any game I go for mage i just love casting spells and magic and in Terraria specifically I find it to be the most fun class with the greatest weapon variety and utility as well as some of the most interesting weapons in the game it’s gone through phases of being the strongest and perhaps weakest class in Terraria but with where it sits today it’s hard to argue it’s actually the best class in the game in fact there are many who argue it is the worst and they have some really good points so today we’re going to fix the mage class by making three very important changes we are going to need to fix preh hard mode rework mana and create new accessories first perhaps the most obvious change is to the mage in preh hard mode there are a lot of problems with it so let’s take them one at a time first its armor progression is absolutely broken jungle armor and meteor armor are basically on the same tier with meteor armor primarily benefiting from infinite space gun or zaponator jungle armor gives you one extra defense 80 extra mana and grants a good bit of critical strike boost while meteor armor is straight damage with no extra mana given generally jungle is best if you’re not using the zapnator or space gun but here’s the problem with this setup jungle armor can be acquired pre- boss meteor armor at least is limited to meteorite which can only be mined after killing the evil boss of your world so meteor armor is pretty well balanced in my opinion it’s jungle armor that needs an overhaul look at the other classes in their armors summoner has the flings for a coat pretty lame but it’s all they get pre- boss obsidian gear is post evil boss and B ggeear is gained from queen bee this provides a certain level of progression for the summoner ranger has fossil armor pre- boss and necro post skeleletron melee doesn’t technically have an armor that specifically buffs melee but I consider shadow crimson and ore armors to be melee because what other armor are they going to use and what other class would choose to use those over their class specific ones so jungle armor makes it so mage has obtained arguably the best armor available to them before killing a single boss now in all fairness this does require the player to navigate the jungle one of the more dangerous places for any new player veterans can more easily gather the needed resources but newbies wouldn’t stand a chance that said if the game was designed assuming you’re going to stick with a class and its relevant armors there’s not a single noob who has ever existed who made a diamond robe and found a wizard hat before exploring the jungle and yes I didn’t mention the robes or wizard hat when talking about class armors because there is no rational person who would actually spend the time to get these things why because it is easier to get jungle armor than it is to mine just above the underworld wait for a rare mob to spawn or a hat and then say a prayer as you hope to find diamonds somewhere both of these are rare unreliable and hard to repeat while jungle armor is very simple to get and very repeatable so long as you have a general idea as to how to handle the mobs enough explaining the problem then how do we fix it simple make jungle armor harder to acquire or debuff it cut its defense in half and make it the lowest first tier armor having the defense alone would much better balance the jungle armor than up perfectly and give a clear reason to upgrade to meteor armor compared to fossil armor having the defense would make it a little less defensive than fossil armor as it should be in keeping with how mage is generally balanced while also providing stronger armor buffs which is also how mage is generally balanced another way you could do it is by adding shadow scales or tissues to the crafting recipe just like how it was added to obsidian armor this would mean jungle and meteor armor are obtained at the same point in progression but at least they are different enough for people to choose one over the other blocking jungle armor behind this progression hurdle would give the player an actual reason to make gem robes in the first place and the thing is they aren’t actually that bad of a mage armor the diamond one increases max mana by 80 reduces mana cost by 15% and gives three defense the weakest amethyst robe gives zero defense with 20 more mana 5% and reduced mana cost and even that is at least workable with how cheap it is in fact this whole system makes mage real interesting having seven slight variations of armor that gradually increase in power depending on the rarity of the gem you find is kind of cool plus this only takes up your chest armor slots you can still wear some ore armor for extra defense or other benefits the problem arises from this thing being a set either you get a wizard hat from Tim or buy a magic hat from the traveling merchant and which hat you get will change what set bonus you have speaking of the traveling merchant he sells you yet another mage armor the mystic robe mage by far has the most choices when it comes to armor and yet the vast majority of them are totally ignored because jungle armor can be obtained too early in the game just move jungle armor later in progression all you’d be doing is making obtainable at the same time as the other armor it is on tier with i do think though it’d be a good idea to add a hood to complement the robes so you don’t need a lucky traveling immersion or a rare spawn to get a set bonus the hood wouldn’t need to give much of a buff to anything at all and the set bonus could be minimal and different from the wizard and magic hat but at least make it a set so the robes feel more complete but this is where we run into our second problem mages weapons in preh hard mode as nice as all these armor sets are they are not complemented at all with the available weapon options first let’s get the demon scythe out of the way you shouldn’t be able to obtain this thing until post evil bosses at least and I will die on this hill the demon scythe is one of the strongest mage weapons available and once again you can obtain it pre-boss now admittedly it is in some ways harder to get as you have to farm a strong enemy in the underworld which could take a very long time and many people are not interested in that headache but those who are dedicated to it can get full jungle armor and a demon scythe before King Slime and play the rest of Rehard mode with that gear it’s dumb i say make the demon scythe an item found in shadow chests why because the dungeon mage weapons are actually really good and they deserve to see more use maybe debuff the Fireflower and make it a drop from demons instead because nobody uses the Fireflower over the Demon Scythe anyways plus it’s a solid weapon that also deserves more use and if you want a tip the Fireflower shines the most early hard mode not preh hard mode with that tackled we need to talk about all the mage weapons pre-colletron first and most obviously all the stavs they are the most boring mage weapons in the game which I guess is fine considering how early in the game you get them but worse than that is how weak they are for how hard they are to obtain their damage output is fine at best but bows made from the same ores are almost as powerful as their staff variants while also being far easier to obtain and depending on the arrow you use bows can be even stronger while also being a little easier to use which leads me to the main issue of gem stavs how slow their projectiles are and how obnoxious they can be to obtain or is very often easier to find than gems and when you need eight of any given gem it can take a lot of mindless mining in random directions until you find enough gems for the staff you’re after what’s really obnoxious though is how the diamond staff is the best staff but you can only naturally obtain it on a world that has platinum you can’t shimmer gold into platinum so the only way to get the staff is either from slime dropping platinum ore or from fishing for a long time and with how mediocre the weapon is it’s not worth that effort the second problem with them is their slow projectiles which makes them a poor weapon to use against a lot of the relevant bosses like Aya Cthulhu Skeletron and Queen Bee all of these can be difficult to hit with a staff making them even less viable the Thunder Zapper comes into the fray as the only potential weapon that could save the preh hard mode mage its faster projectile and half decent damage makes it suitable but not necessarily on tier with other classes at the same point in progression and by that I mean it primarily will struggle against Skeletron so here’s my fix for Mage’s gem stats imbue them with a debuff when wearing a full robe set you know when we add the hoods that I mentioned earlier to keep that armor in its proper place its set bonus can’t be massive so what if we made it so that if you’re wearing the corresponding gem robes with gem staff it dealt some sort of debuff to its target you can even tar it a bit and make it so robes don’t have a set bonus unless it’s a ruby or diamond staff or maybe amber too and the ruby set bonus could maybe inflict a burning debuff and diamond frost burn that is assuming of course we want to keep the kind of stupid diamond and ruby differences maybe both inflict burning this could make stabs much more valuable if they could just inflict a debuff maybe even make a new debuff of some sort whatever it is it doesn’t have to be anything crazy you could also make it so staff projectiles are just faster but if you did that then the thunder zapper would need a little something to make it still useful or different or whatever another fun thing you should do is make a recipe that combines the low mid and high tier stabs say amethyst emerald and ruby or maybe topaz sapphire and diamond to make the multicolor staff that shoots three projectiles instead of just one with similar damage to the diamond staff maybe lower i I think it’d be cool and maybe add demonites or crimine to the recipe just to spice things up a little bit now there are three more weapons that need to be mentioned the space gun weatherpain and violet thorn first the space gun some people argue that the space gun is more or less useless due to it being a pretty weak weapon i hardily disagree as I think it needs to be this week if the meteor armor is going to make it cost zero mana the space gun is not meant to be a primary weapon but one that is used once your mana runs out allowing you to continue dealing damage while waiting for mana to recharge if you wish to avoid mana sickness weather Pane is a mage weapon that actually complements the staff really well it’s a great utility weapon the only issue is it being a deerclops drop and deerclops is that weird boss you either brute force through gritted teeth or the game or fight on even footing at the point in progression where the drops are almost pointless but the weather pain is a secondary utility weapon that makes mage a far more interesting class than people give it credit for just remember that it’s not a primary weapon but a secondary where you shoot the tornado and then switch to another weapon don’t keep shooting tornadoes like I used to you’re wasting mana and time and dam you’re wasting everything and finally the vilethorn i didn’t mention the evil boss when talking about viable mage weapons because the vilethorn is a great weapon against the eater of worlds while the crimson cloud is not very helpful at all against the the brain the Violet Thorn is great as a utility weapon going through walls but isn’t helpful for any bosses after the worm which is fine the Crimson Cloud is at least a little more useful during boss battles in the future but it’s not going to be a primary weapon like the Vilethorn or really deal much damage at all leaving the mage and crimson worlds with fewer options against the brain the Thunder Zapper is good for second phase brain but without the Vilethorn the lack of piercing weapons can really be felt in first form and I know I also didn’t mention the book of skulls and begun and that’s just because I think both of them are solid weapons for their place and progression and there isn’t really a whole lot to say and the great zaponator is busted if you use meteor armor but with it being a purchase civil weapon from the traveling merchant actually obtaining one is so inconsistent to be considered when balancing the mage class and so this is how I would summarize the needed improvements to mage and preh hard mode add shadow scales and tissue samples to the jungle armor crafting recipe to force players to use the gem robes add a robe hood to create a mage armor set with a set bonus that buffs the corresponding gem staff that buff can be inflicting a burning debuff or maybe deal more damage or maybe the projectile travels faster whatever the choice even a minor buff would make them far more usable and finally turn the demon scythe into shadow chest loot debuff the firefl and make it a demon drop thematically it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but we’re only worried about balancing and that mostly gets the mage there in preh hard mode so is preh hard mode totally fixed let’s talk about the mana system mana is a tricky system to get right in any video game if it’s possible to get it right at all after all if you have a ranged and mage class how are you going to make mana not feel like an off-brand ranger with infinite ammo that you have to occasionally recharge terraria I think handles mana fine but not necessarily great you have a max of 200 mana which is not terrible per se and the only way to recharge it is either by sitting around no longer using magic weapons or chugging mana potions now mana sickness is a strangely complex debuff in simplest terms your damage is reduced by 1% every 1/5 of a second meaning 5% for every 1 second of debuff you have with a maximum of 10 seconds drinking one potion gives you 5 seconds of debuff and thus 25% damage reduction that ticks down by 5% every second if you’re chugging real good then you could have a total 50% damage reduction the system I think is flawed partially due to how much your damage is being altered and how frequently and makes it very hard to figure out just how much of a detriment chugging mana potions is all that we can conclude is that if you’re slurping the stuff down like it’s going out of style then you could easily be losing 25 to 50% of your damage a mage isn’t half bad at dishing out damage but any class would be relegated to the back of the pack if it took a hit to their DPS that was that large but of course there are ways to avoid this from happening what are those methods well realistically the only good one is the mana regeneration potion this basically makes it so mage doesn’t need mana potions at all so long as they are willing to stop shooting for a meager 1 second the way mana regeneration is calculated is about as complex as mana sickness if not more so well no no actually it’s definitely way more complicated i reread it several times and have no idea what’s going on so we’re just going to go off of how the game feels as a mage enthusiast or mage mean whatever um I use it frequently so I have a general feeling that the way that it feels is like I either have to use a mana regeneration potion or else chug mana potions and there’s no in between so how do we fix this how do we make mana more interesting how do we make mage an equally as interesting class without making it into the one class that is entirely reliant on potions without also making it little more than an off-brand ranger or I guess also overpowered well interestingly enough the answer might actually be simpler than most people think the reason being that most people playing mage are probably doing it wrong if they have been playing it anything like how I have been for well ever show of hands how many of you have played mage and by default use all of your mana till the last drop is gone and then either wait for it to regenerate or start chugging potions for those who wait you know that it takes absolutely forever to get back to full in the heat of battle for those who chug you feel the pains of damage loss however something I have learned about mana regeneration from researching for this video is that mana recharges faster when you have more mana left in the tank this is the formula for calculating the mana regeneration delay or how long it takes to start regenerating mana after you stop using mage weapons using this formula you could probably mathematically figure out the ideal amount of mana to use to let you recharge the fastest and minmax mana effectiveness but keeping this formula in mind while I was playing with it I found that consuming only about half your mana was generally ideal for faster regen times while also having the pleasure of actually using your weapons and running away from the boss and I’m not exaggerating when I say that the difference in using only half and using all of your mana was palpable the only annoying part is that this requires you to pay a lot more attention to your mana bar which actually makes me think of a change that could be made what if a small bar appeared over the player’s head when they’re using magic weapons to make it easier to maximize your mana usage like like a miniature mana bar appears over the head and shows you how much you have i feel like that would make it a lot easier to maximize your mana usage without needing to look all the way to the far right of the screen all the time make it a toggable part of the UI or something that that’d be pretty nice all that to say that the biggest problem with mana in Terraria is our own misunderstanding of it especially when you consider mana stars these are what truly set mage apart from the ranger by creating a cost and reward for the mage to play aggressively and by mana stars I mean the ones that enemies drop not not the ones that use to get maxed mana see mana stars can allow you to spray your weapons as long as you’d like but this requires that you kill enemies and then get close enough to where you have killed them to pick up the stars even with the celestial magnet this is not always the easiest thing to do especially during dangerous events like the frost and pumpkin moon the main problem arises when you fight bosses who do not summon minions all of a sudden the constant reward variable is gone all that’s left is the waiting game instead of having the delicate balance of rushing to collect mana stars or playing it cautious and recharging you’re forced to only one style waiting either that or you can go crazy with statues to spawn enemies that you can farm for mana stars or I guess also use the mana statue thing but I think if you have to go that far out of your way to get Mage to work then you’ve already lost how then do we fix the mana system well perhaps there’s a copout but it’s by fixing Mage’s accessories but before we talk about how we’re going to fix them we must establish one thing the mage has different play styles but it would seem to me that most people only go for one maybe two because of the misunderstanding of how mage works the main play style I have gone for and have seen many others do is the damage build kit out your mage with menacing or lucky accessories drink a mana regeneration potion and spray out damage like nobody’s business this play style more or less requires that mana regeneration potions are used or else the damage build will suffer greatly from overconumption of mana potions another style of play that I think should be more common is another type of damage build but it’s focused much more on preserving your mana and not needing potions rather than menacing or lucky you go for the Arcane Reforge the reforge that most people probably just shrug at and couldn’t be bothered with on its own 20 mana feels like nothing but once you stack five or more accessories with Arcane and have increased your mana by 50% you start to feel the effects much more dramatically this on top of your armor and accessories also increasing your mana and you’ll see a mana bar that looks like it were from a modded playthrough of the game rather than chug potions this mage is able to spray their weapons for a long period of time but only consuming half of their gauge allowing it to be recharged pretty quickly without needing potions at all this sounds great and all that there are basically two ways to play a damage mage build the only issue is that one takes a lot more intentionality with building up your mana while the other requires you to make a relatively cheap potion and because mana regeneration charges your mana so fast you’re able to use your weapons more often with that strategy than with the mana build one so why do the mana build in the first place why does the class that relies on mana not reward you for having more mana well funnily enough for the low mana damage build there is one issue that they could run into and that’s from accidentally chugging mana potions how does this happen with the maniflower of course now before continuing yes there are other styles to play the mage but we’ll be focusing on these two as they are the most likely ones to be played in my opinion mostly the low mana build i don’t see too many people doing the tank mage or whatever this is where our talk on accessories begins with the mana flower crafted using a mana potion in nature’s gift you would think this accessory would be a gift to any mage but it’s actually a curse in disguise this accessory quickly teaches the player that they no longer need to worry about running out of mana because this thing would chug their potions for them like it wants to burn their entire life savings it’s incredibly easy you find yourself drinking so many of these potions that you consume hundreds on a single mining trip and are tipsy from mana consumption and this of course results in heavy heavy mana sickness debuffs during battle this is a problem for the low mana build because if you have this accessory equipped and you aren’t careful then you could get hit with the debuff well that’s no problem you might think just don’t equip the maniflower well I would if I could but half of mag’s accessories use this thing in their recipe magnaflower arcane flower mana cloak if you want to craft a mage accessory it’ll require you use this in our cursed thing in the recipe with the only exception being my beloved celestial cuffs and celestial emblem basically all mage accessories are either the celestial magnet or maniflower i’ve tried this playing the mage with low mana and regeneration potions and the most effective way to run it is by not having the mana flower equipped which means there’s only one mage accessory that ever occupies my loadout and that’s really stupid and annoying why you logic why did you add three more mage accessories maybe more in 1.4 only to make them all slight variance to each other this basically means that the mage has only two real accessories they can use assuming you craft everything to the end of its tree otherwise there’s no real benefit in stacking Mana Cloak Arcane Flower and Magna Flower unless the 8% mana reduction stacks which presumably it does but it’s lame that you have all these accessories that do pretty much the exact same thing with one often minor difference now it’s not too uncommon to have only two class specific accessories when you account for also equipping mobility and utility accessories that people usually use so here’s what I propose remove all three of these accessories as part of the maniflowers crafting tree keep the manoflower as its own thing if you want to chug potions you can chug potions actually you know what let’s play nice we’ll keep the celestial emblem crafting tree and add the maniflower emblem that way our potion chuggers will have a later game accessory that helps counteract mana sickness with an even greater benefit for not chugging this leaves us with the magnet flower arcane flower and mana cloak the mana cloak is a great accessory to combine with the magic cuffs because it doubles up the benefits of taking damage so let’s lean into that and make this thing a little more interesting for pretty hard mode let’s add the magic cloak we will make this a simple accessory that plays off of the mana system it doesn’t help lower the complexity at all but at least it gives the newer player a reason to watch their mana a lot more because a newer player would likely never think to only use half their mana before letting it recharge the mana cloak would give a 5% increase of damage with 75% or more mana still in the tank 3% increased damage with 50% or more and 1% below 50 this is a very minor buff but remember that this is a preh hard mode accessory we’ll even say pre- boss that will later combine with the starcloak to make the mana cloak this will give the mage a little more damage while also encouraging the player to watch their mana consumption and perhaps even build up their max mana now the arcane flower this one is odd because you can only get it in corrupt worlds unless you make an entirely new biome which isn’t bad per se but I’m struggling to think of a single other accessory that can only be upgraded if you have a certain biome one of the evil ones that is i can’t think of any let me know if there are maybe there’s a whole bunch of them i’m just not thinking of them right now but I wonder what would happen if we actually left the arcane flower in place as a craftable recipe and then actually added another mana potion recipe which I know is kind of counter to what I’m trying to do here but we’ll add another recipe called the mana knuckles to lean into a more tanky mage build the magnifile and start from scratch let’s have some fun with mage accessories because that is what mage is missing first we’re adding the mana field when equipped if you hit an enemy from a short distance away say 10 blocks you will receive a very small amount of mana back maybe 10% of your mana in return or something like that it’d be similar to the spectre armor healing effect but with mana and specifically only if you are close to the enemy and dealing damage this could lead to a very aggressive mage build when you have the mana field and celestial cuffs in particular perhaps maybe even add the mana cloak this would motivate the player to fight up close and personal because when you take damage you get mana back when you stay close you get mana back and so you could be able to weapon spam but you’re also pushing your luck by using a low defense build in close proximity to your enemies the mana field I imagine being an early hard mode accessory let’s have it be a rare drop from enchanted swords reheard mode could use a little more love so let’s add an accessory that can be made with the band of star power if any mage accessory could use a few more branches it’s the band of star power let’s make it so the band combined with five star shadow scales and demonite to give the mage more of a use for you know demonite and the evil ores and whatnot to craft the star band this band would make it so enemies have a chance of dropping mana stars when they are damaged not when they die this way the mage can get mana stars when fighting bosses who have no minions which is honestly one of the biggest sticking points for mage so let’s add this ability perhaps this accessory turns off mana star drops from enemies when they die and makes it so they only come from damaging them and the odds might need to be lowered a bit to account for magic weapons that shoot an absurd number of projectiles but this would go a long way in making mage less reliant on potions and one last accessory to spice things up a bit the magic glove this would take fereral claws combined with stars and hell stone let’s say this would increase magic weapon velocity by 10% making a lot of the shorter range weapons a whole lot more interesting but those are some of my thoughts on how the mage could be fixed some other ideas I had that I decided against changing or at least going into detail in this video include altering the arcane reforge entirely to make it more like the other buffs you know there’ be the uh 1 to 4% options and each percentage would either lower the time it takes to start recharging mana or increase the rate at which it recharges potentially reaching the point that a fully arcane mage build could be nearly as effective at recharging mana as a mana regeneration potion a few new weapons pre- boss couldn’t hurt more interesting set bonuses like the spectre armor set you know spectre armor is so good and so cool and I’d love to see mage have more set bonuses that are as interesting as that rework mana potions so they don’t have sickness but work on a five or 10 second cooldown keep the auto chugging accessories but just remove sickness altogether and force the player into not being able to attack until it recharges this would make it a lot less tempting to chug but I can see chugging as a kind of strategy for people so I don’t see why not leave it in there’s a lot of potential with mage and I think some of these changes could go a long way towards helping it be a more interesting and balanced class in Terraria and maybe I’ll need to commission a modder to actually put these things into the game and put my money where my mouth is per se maybe my ideas are stupid and would mess with the mage’s balance spectacularly let me know what you think do you have some mage ideas that are better than mine or are some of mine impossibly stupid to even consider i love to hear your thoughts

Terraria’s mage class is often talked about negatively. People think that it’s weak or has some major problems, especially in pre-hardmode, so today lets dive deep into Terraria’s mage class and see how we can fix it.
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