Mage Ideas

[Lyte]

Maybe diversifying pets is the key to making Mages interesting?

Allowing Mages more control over pet actions? (is this possible to some degree?)

Air Pet: Rogue-like with backstabs from behind, can be temporarily "dominated" by the Mage to scout with very slow movement but Sneak/Hide. This has a time limit, and if the pet is still in danger territory when time limit fades, mobs can aggro.

Fire Pet: Long ranged attacker. All attacks are from ranged and are fire-based. This pet could be ideal for raiding bosses that AE?

Earth Pet: Pretty much the same as currently but with better aggro abilities. Perhaps a triggerable "AE Taunt" that is once every 30 minutes.

Water Pet: Crowd Control pet? Has current abilities like a Slow Proc, but can be sacrificed by sending it with force into a mob to mesmerize it for xyz duration. The Water Pet would be sacrificed, and with pet summoning limitations means it can only be sacrificed once every 2 minutes.

??? Pet: Cleric Pet? Randomly targets damaged characters and casts a 5-second heal. Pet could share mana with the Mage to balance it out. Mage could have some direction with who the pets cast the spell by placing the pets in certain areas--pets would select targets based on proximity? (I know this can be done because of the Beastlord share damage AA with Beastlord pets?)

Therefore, if you place the Cleric Pet beside MTs on raids, you leave it susceptible to AE damage. It would be ideal for placing beside DPS groups or Healer groups who occasionally get damaged.

Allowing mages to switch between pets quickly by lowering mana costs on pets and cool-down on summoning pets might make it a very versatile and cool class to play.

 

[BeittilBonker]

??? Pet: Cleric Pet? Randomly targets damaged characters and casts a 5-second heal. Pet could share mana with the Mage to balance it out. Mage could have some direction with who the pets cast the spell by placing the pets in certain areas--pets would select targets based on proximity? (I know this can be done because of the Beastlord share damage AA with Beastlord pets?)

Lol, i can see all those mages go like... wtf, where is my mana! And then they find out what their pet is doing! I dont think a cleric pet is a good idea

 

[Lyte]

??? Pet: Cleric Pet? Randomly targets damaged characters and casts a 5-second heal. Pet could share mana with the Mage to balance it out. Mage could have some direction with who the pets cast the spell by placing the pets in certain areas--pets would select targets based on proximity? (I know this can be done because of the Beastlord share damage AA with Beastlord pets?)

Lol, i can see all those mages go like... wtf, where is my mana! And then they find out what their pet is doing! I dont think a cleric pet is a good idea

Haha, well, the spell could be a slow drain on Mage Mana. It won't be something drastic like you summon Cleric Pet and 5 seconds later you are oom. Or, the Cleric Pet can even have it's own Mana Pool, or a hard limit on # of heals it can cast before it dies.

Remember, the main concept I am working with is making Mages versatile by allowing them to switch between pets easily and quickly, taking advantage of the pets' abilities as the fight evolves.

Imagine the boss fight or exp group where casters are damaged for a bit, but Clerics/padders are busy. A Mage in the raid switches up to the Cleric Pet, positions it near the casters so it quickly heals up damaged players, then switches back to another pet.

 

[vistachiri]

As a rapidly approaching 65 mage myself (28% to go ) here's me thoughts.
Also just throwing out ideas here (disclaimer to offset any JU WANT YOUR CLASS TO BE TEH UBERZ! stuff)


1. Don't have the relic pet so I don't know what it does essentially, if someone could clear that up that would help. I hear (and believe) its a total beast. However in the line of making things more interesting perhaps an aa that would modify the type of elemental that it is? Something kind of like the pet hold cmd, but more related to changing its type to one of the lower pets.

2. I havent really seen a whole lot of problem w/dps from my perspective so far. Rains are pretty much still my best source as far as I can eye it. Been meaning to pop up a spell parser, but in comparison to dd's rains still seem to pretty much own them in all respects. EX: Mob at 80% DD shock of sun 1400 or so dmg grr aggro, pet takes it off, but I better wait at least a bit b4 doing it again or it doesnt have much of a chance of taking it off. EX2 Mob at 80% => Maelstrom of Electricity 945 dmg....945 dmg....945 dmg. Pet keeps it the whole time. For solo I pretty much use dd's only situationally (Scars of Sigil for example, incredibly fast, easy on the mana and a quick 540 dmg to finish off a fleeing mob b4 it walls or aggro's others, or shock of the sun for a relatively low on health ching mob that's already got a storm on them).

3. Banishing elementals...I haven't yet obtained the 65 version of this spell, but it seems kind of silly that it tops at the same max level as the level 60 banishment (acc to the spelllink off wiki), the necro one seems to do this as well, while the wizzy one starts at 54 and stays 54. I realize they both do more damage, but its kind of silly that a mage whose entire career involves summoning elementals and for a necro likewise undead would not be able to destroy an undead or elemental that a wizard easily could. The lower wizzy one strikes me as odd too, perhaps start it at 44 max then up to 54 w/the higher for both, making that higher spell much more desirable. As a mage really the only time I even have banishment up is on a tmap where fire elementals have a significant chance of popping, and even then I hold no chance of actually destroying those. Same w/necro's at this level I'd imagine

4. Some extra summons plz . It would be really nice to be able to actually summon some extra stuff w/utility There are some already available that I absolutely adore, such as enduring bread and water of knowledge (which I go so far as to consider an incredibly long duration buff), modrods of course, and everyone's favorite...dots. However certain spells (I'm looking at you weapons of "power") seem to be horribly underpowered. Blade of power for example, gives a tiny ac boost and a tiny bit better weapon for a pearl to your pet, again just eyeing as I don't use a parser (which come to think of can anyone reccomend one?) it didnt seem to have much difference. Over the course of quite a few fights I never saw the pet actually do more dmg max wise than he normally did, but again I have to parse this, it's pretty much been added my, yeah I don't use it much list b/c of the amount of time it takes to pop, and the cost of the pearls. A summon pearl spell or even switching the reagent to peridots would help a ton, hell I'd always use it then, rather than the daggers I still end up using.


The searfire aug btw is fantasticness incarnate. Though some other utility items would be awesome, items in the line of the levi ring, or deepshard for example. A clicky invis ring (with charges of course) would be kind of neat, heck even another type of petwep that adds a diff proc or something like that for variety.

5. A cold line? It seems kind of odd that mages are pretty much masters of the elements but would have trouble making an ice cube. Was kind of a problem mid 50's running through redsun peaks to lasanth and really would never try to solo there on the sheer basis that my highest spells at that point would have been a resistfest (as I'm sure a fire salamander, snake or whatever wouldnt be bothered by a bit o'heat lol).

6. Is host of the elements working?? I thought it was, saw this and am now wondering, I definitely have been eyeing it up.

7. Bit of an idea on the monster summoning thinking over the relic suggestion, perhaps when put it, it would allow you to choose different pets making pets even more situational? That would be kind of neat, and make for a nice interesting twist, dunno if it would even be possible though.

 

[tinkaa]

Host of the Elements is fully working.

 

[Garluk]

Wow! You guys talked someone into casting rez on this thread after a year?

After reading the old suggestions at the start and looking at the class now I say kudo's to the staff for making all the changes that have been implemented. There are lots of AAs that do affect pet performance: elemental mastery (think that's the one that allows pets to inherit our AAs) plus Lightning Reflexing plus Unerring Precision has made Snuggles into a serious monster, even before he got upgraded to relic status. The pets are nicely differentiated, each has their own special abilities that you can choose from based on the situation. All the pets do a pretty good job of holding aggro while soloing once you learn how to adapt to them.

As of this writing Garluk is around 230 AAs and I still have another 80-100 that I'd like to get before I start doing innate stats. Some of them may not be real exciting and the bulk of the benefit does come in the first 100-150 but isn't that true of EVERY class?


Addressing Dubnobass' comment about being bored on raids...

Awardis and I take a few minutes while the raid is assembling prior to departure to spam summon everything that'll be needed for the night. Any latecomers or people that notice 30 minutes later that they are NOW out of food get dirty looks and the items summoned at OUR convenience. This means that we can concentrate more on what is actually happening. I have also taken over the malo duties. Yes, believe it or not some shamans will not debuff mobs to their max potential. This became glaringly obvious with just a bit of testing one night. I was noticing a LOT of resists (this was prior to the general overhaul to resist rates) so I tried to mala (the unresistable one). It didn't stick. Then I tried malosini and it DID stick. After that my nukes got through a lot better. Since then I consider debuffing the mob to be the single most important thing that I do at raids. I'd even go so far as to say that fully debuffing the mob rather than just stopping after casting the unresistable malo is equivalent to having an extra wizard and possibly two.

This was recently vindicated to my complete and total satisfaction. After being rezzed about 30 seconds before the next mob was pulled it put a smile on my face to listen to all the wizards bitch about resisted nukes all because I wasn't able to debuff due to being OOM. Besides, shaman pull enough aggro with slow. By tossing in an unresistable mala 2 secs after the mob is engaged the shaman are able to start slowing sooner making the fight easier for everyone. Then while I am trying to upgrade it to malosini I put the pet on the mobs arse. Once all that is done, I break out the rain nukes (provided there aren't any mezzed or untanked mobs in the blast radius which is actually surprisinging small). After the tank has had plenty of time to get a real good lock on aggro I'll start mixing in single target nukes with the rains and slowly progress to nothing but pure blasting. And during it all you have to keep an eye on the pets health if there are any AEs, if the mob gets turned and he eats riposte or if it enrages. There are plenty of things for a mage to do at a raid. Ask your local shaman if he'll mind if you start doing the malo dance on the mobs ass, I'd bet he won't hesitate to let you take over


An additional comment regarding the changes to the recast times on pet heals...

Sometimes it does become real difficult to keep your pet up under raid level AEs. But considering how much a pet does contribute (my relic pet with comp str 6 focus comes in at 60-70 dps on raids not including DoT dmg) I don't think it is asking to much of a priest that is not REAL busy to toss a heal on your pet if you are struggling. And if the worst happens and he ends up dieing, then just make another one for the next fight.

I'm not very happy about the change but I totally understand and agree with the reason for the change. Mages are an OFFENSIVE class. We are NOT pet clerics. My pet is about 30% of my total DPS, he is not the end-all be-all of the class. Toss some nukes on that mob. Make that pet work to hold aggro. Sure you may have to aggro kite a few while you are learning just how much you can burn it, but once you learn where that line is you'll find yourself killing and exp'ing much faster. And with the changes to med rates you can be FM in no time.


Overall, I'd have to say I'm pretty happy with the mage class. Am I envious when the wizzy pops off a 25k primal? I'd be lieing if I said no. The only thing I'd really like to see changed would be for rain spells to have the same crit chance as single target nukes.

 

[tinkaa]

Agree with Garluk.
Even though shamans also have Malosini, it's better to share mob's hate. I'm using the same tactic.

I actually enjoy being the one that summons things (usually before we port to raid spot, so I don't get bugged later).

I only wish pets would benefit from our stats such as stamina, dexterity, agility, strength and natural durability (well, we already have an AA, that increases it's hitpoints)
Pet AA proc would also be nice (bst pets proc a 190 DD afaik - fire pet crits for 120).

Imagine a raid without a mage - no dots, no searfires, no rods, no coh! Suffer
/for example - classes that use peridots: clerics, enchanters, beastlords, wizards, necros.. That's a whole lot of unhappy players

 

[Raherin]

Pets don't need a proc.

A relic pet has a nice timed DD/stun, not to mention they will also usually have Blades to compliment it on a raid.

So I really don't think that's needed. I'm also thinking mages are a pretty balanced class right now, in the group game, and raid game. They've gotten some very, very nice changes, and probably now are one of the lowest "bad AA" classes nowadays.

I also don't think this thread needed another bump. ;p