Which would make it an exploration experience for everyone.
But I doubt you or anyone else wants that. What I think you and others in this thread want is known, easily accessible locations for everyone. I think it is beneficial to just come out and say that because every discussion about this issue is clouded by a smokescreen thrown up by people like Torak who don't want to admit the "real" reason they dislike the ABS changes. In your post, that smokescreen is "randomness." Is it really the randomness that bothers you, or is it that your first experience didn't result in a powerhouse? Would you really be happy if experience one and two resulted in non-powerhouses? That would definitely be less random. So yeah, talking about randomness isn't going to move the ball anywhere.
There's really a logical way to look at this. And it's recently been made easier since the IMMs gave mages "Shield" as a class spell. But the process relies on agreeing upon a single question:
1. Is it NECESSARY for mages to have Barrier and Aura >50% of the time to compete 1v1 with other classes? (Mages already have ready access to Shield.)
- I think the answer is no, having fought tons of mages with Aura, Barrier, and Shield going. If there's some warrior player out there with better PK numbers than mine who says warriors have a really good chance against Aura/Barrier/Shield mages 1v1, I MIGHT be swayed from my opinion. But so far, the only people who disagree with me can't walk the walk. Period.
- I think if Aura and Barrier were easily available to every mage the balance would be stupidly out of whack at Hero level with regard to melee vs. mages, worse than it already is. I think the only way to balance that would be to give melee classes access to those protections, as well.
- Unfortunately, no one can agree on this. So we never go anywhere with discussions on changing the system.
As far as solutions, depending on the collective answer to Question #1, you could just stick non-lim AB wands on a single mob. If it is not NECESSARY to have Aura and Barrier for 1v1 fights, put the wands on a really rough mob, like a dragon. If it is NECESSARY to have Aura and Barrier for 1v1 fights, put the wands on an easier mob.
