So I was thinking about how mages and melees fight in general. I think mages generally want to land their spells in hit and run fashion unless they are close to a kill. Melees pretty much want to be in combat as much as possible for maximum DPS. What if we gave mages (and potentially melees or underrepresented melee combos which I'll go into later) an extra incentive to stay in combat, while not destroying viable hit and run tactics? I think necromancers already do this rather well with how some of their abilities synergize. This is not a strength or a balancing idea, but more of an idea that is meant to open up methods of combat and reward different strategies.
For example, Battlemages cast rust, and each consecutive cast after 2 successful rusts increases damage by sharpmetal. Or revitalize Colour Spray to mark the enemy with a rune, and if you sharpmetal the rune it explodes for a status effect.
Shamans, (Who I do not think are over or underpowered) could be required to land poison first before dysentery can land, or else make poison allow dysentery to land much easier while making it more difficult to land without poison first. This way you have better luck to "build up" your mal stacking than go straight for the dirtiest one. This can change depending on the perceived strength of the class, but would add to the strategies one could employ.
DKs, who recently seem to struggle landing mals (The change to buff their mal level expresses this cleanly) could perhaps be MORE dangerous when you are nearly dead. They have better spell penetration (however you want to code it) against lower HP opponents. Conversely if you DO manage to spell someone up at full hp perhaps they take more damage.
Invokers, most people don't seem to think they need help so this would not be a buff. Invokers actually have this effect already with using fire and ice shields to make flame arrows etc better. Compounding Dispel on Hellstream is already a good combo. Maybe Firestorms in forests are stronger with more fuel to fire them.
Clerics, perhaps try to differentiate damage/combat clerics from attrition clerics. Small value increase on consecutively casted cure crits, but staying in combat increases the duration or strength of their combat abilities.
To tackle underrepresented melee combos like I said I would, What if high int melees (gnomes, elves) got some further bonuses to weapon classes or could benefit past normal melees with dirt kicking. Would a gnome/elf Warrior with a one round lag dirt be OP? (Credit: Wade)
Bottom line is I'm not trying to directly affect strength of classes, *although this could be an effect of these changes if Staff wanted it to be. *I am looking to make some playstyles more dynamic and bring life to some underrepresented combos. As I mentioned I feel this has already been done very well with some classes like new Necromancers. If any of these examples are attractive as ideas, not as specific change suggestions, I'm willing to thinktank more ways to positively affect combat choices and strategies.
Thanks for reading!