mages recapped

[shebearcub]

I actually started this for myself to see what had actually been suggested in the 8 pages of arguements in the main thread. I figured I'd post it in case anyone else was wondering as well.

quotes have been edited down to bare suggestions or outline of the problem. I deleted the rest of the qualifying statements or comparisons to other classes etc. So I'm not interested in hearing about how you're misquoted or that's not what you said.
If you want the original then click the link at the top of the quoted post to find it's spot on the 8 or 9 pages of the original thread.

This is just a stripped down summary of what i've seen in that thread, it probably isn't complete but I'm only posting it for a bare bones place to simplify the points stated before....

once again, i'm not trying to represent anyone that originally posted, only leaving the names /links in so you can find the original post if you want it. If you want to add a point I missed awesome, but I thought a thread simply to state Your own point, without arguing other classes or personality conflicts might be an easier way to get staff/player attention who aren't interested in the emotional investment of the arguments going on in the other one.

Please leave discussion where it came from, or add to it there ( http://www.shardsofdalaya.com/forum/index.php?topic=11663.0 ) so we can keep a cleaned up thread here.

What I'd like to see is - a better resist adjustment on our magic nukes/rains (after all wizards get lures and necros have a whole bunch of types of damage to make up for the mobs resisting a few types more than the other - I think a better resist adjust would be in place).
Perhaps add an effect "share aggro" on Elemental mastery AA - it lowers your aggro (for example, at chain nuking) and shares it with pet.
Fire based rain - make it level 65 if need be, pre-archaic nuke (which most mages won't see for a long time) fire damage is minor.
Make pets awesome aux tanks - a special modification to (mage) pet aux tanking, increasing their ac would probably be too powerful for groups.
Better pet heal or add healing increment to one of the already existing AAs - as mentioned before, 1.5k on AEing/whirlwinding/etc mobs every 20 seconds can't keep a pet alive, even if it has 10k hp fully relic buffed /AAd.

What I'd like to see?

The better resist adjust might be nice, but I'd probably prefer a little strategy added instead and just see us get an icenuke, spreading out our bag of tricks. Thus rather than follow the same old nuke nuke nuke with the best spell up of 2 types it becomes a hmmm he's weak to ice, nuke w/ice, he's weak to magic, magic nuke, etc etc. A little more variety and would certainly be an incredible boon in places like pot.

The shareaggro would quite frankly be incredible. Didn't even consider this but a kickass idea. Would make up for lack of aggroreduction methods for sure.

Definitely a better petheal.

Perhaps a summoned bp? Nothing too powerful mind you, or a buff that goes on pets. I'm told armor increases their ac, but dropped armor does not grow on trees at 65, only comes as trash in a few zones, and purchasing armor every time you go out certainly would be a pain, not to mention wouldnt really be done.

I suggest a line of moderate resist DDs with decent cast times and mana efficiency that work ONLY when you have no pet. This would come into use mostly at the raid stage. Something more than mages have now but less than wizards. Never give us more than 75% of the base DPS of a wiz (excluding crits) I would also suggest that, like wizards, this line of spells have 3 forms that change through levels ( Fire, Magic or Cold or switch cold for poison or disease or something, just more variety to try to help land more often although cold makes more sense as an element)

I also would like to suggest a line of single target rain spells. Our rain spells are decent DPS but with multiple mobs are rendered useless. Single target, 3 tic, similar damage to what we have but have about 60% mana cost of what it is for the 2 mobs hit version. Takes care of the problem.

I would like to add my voice to having the pet aux tank better would be awesome. make raids want a mage or two.

1. Any spells that would increase the mitigation of the pets, even if mana intensive would be welcome by me.

2. A buffline for the pets that increased damage/ added a proc for a certain mob type.
Make it a quest, heck. make it a ton of quests. One for each type. Quests are fun.

3. It was mentioned in a thread long ago about making (well, back then it was a replacement. But how about a unique spellline itself) stationary summoned short duration mini-pets that did range damage depending upon what type of pet was summoned. (either by spell or by pet currently owned)

4. A petbuff that 'if the pet dies' has a % chance of causeing damage to the killing mob. A sort of explosive death buff. Not extremely useful, but hey.. I'm pull at straws by now.

I also would like to see a more powerfull fast casting nuke like scars of sigil. maybe a bit higher lvl and magic based, would cost a bit more, have the same cast time as scars, and hit for a couple hundred more dmg.

As for the the pet/lifefire you could make it so pets could not be recast for 15 mins, or maybe after the blast you are stunned for 30 seconds....

Maybe adding poison based rains would be something to consider. Id love to see Rurho cast ACIDIC RAIN on some evil mobs and watch them melt into a pool of gush

I would like to able to summon armor for my pet ...the ac for my pet would be nice and i for one don't have the plat to buy armor to give him .

thanks for all the work Wiz and Co. :dance:

Couple things.

What would everyone think about another pet focus called maybe "Companion Resists" which ups the base resists for your pets by a large margin. Can have the first lvls drop off the lower raid game and climb progressively so that you can keep your poor little guys up with just your own heals on the evil raid mobs.

Wont fix everything, but might fix the pet dieing on raids issue.

For background: I suggested this a month or so ago. I was going to put it on some clickies in the Rust but decided it would be a better idea to just make it a focus. I floated the idea, then Rab rightly pointed out that Mages/Necros/etc already have to worry about having 5000 focuses and that maybe resists should just be rolled into Companion Health. If resists on pets are upped, I'd bet this is how it ends up happening (resists added to comp. health).

Could the recast time on the Host of the Elements AA be lowered? Currently it is 22 minutes for magicians.

Spell resists are horrible for non-relic & raiding magicians- fire & magic are probably the highest resisted spell types on SoD, and those are the only spells we have.

(...on keeping pets alive...)
A few things can fix this problem, one of them is pet resists...

Give pets a 65% damage reduction on rampage/whirlwind damage and a 50% damage reduction on AoE damage spells...

Why not simply add a mage/necro/bst pet line that specializes in ranged combat? Say, a familair-type pet that loiters near its owner and lobs class-apropos spells instead of engaging directly in melee. This pet would do less dps than the normal one, for obvious reasons, but wouldn't be vulnerable to rampage+ww.

I think there are a few things that could be changed on top of the great alterations that have been made.

Rain spells....When I target a mob in a group and cast a rain spell and it kills the target, it seems to jump an inordinate amount of distance to hit me VS the other mobs that were standing right by the target (6 liodreth, targeted one who died on wave 1 then it jumped to me while I was well out of range)

I would also suggest a higher version of Scars of Sigil. A fast cast nuke that isnt horribly hard hitting, but is fast casting. Maybe a base of 750 at level 61-62 with same cast time of 2.0. There is an absolute shortage of spells that take less than 6 seconds to cast.

Point Blank AE's... Ok they are limited to hitting 6 mobs, maybe we could spread it out a touch more rather than have to have them absolutely on top of you. Nothing too huge, just maybe double the previous range.

Thanks for the time you took reading this.

.......

I think mage nukes need to hit 10% harder and cast 2 seconds faster (our main nukes take 6 seconds)

Mages really need a new rain spell post 60. Rain spells are some of our best DPS but they are situationally... I could really see a 63-64 fire rain spell.

Mage pet heals, I know this one has been talked to death but I think shaving 5 seconds off of the recast time would be fair.

One of the things ive been noticing lately is people constantly missing rods, regardless of whether they are standing close or not. Can the range just be doubled....

... I'd suggest reducing the cast time on all mage single target nukes by 1 to 1.5 secs and/or making the wizard crit AAs available to mages but keep Primals as wizard only.

Personally I'd like to see more utility via summons. (mages)....some additional utility to make them that much more desirable. Preferably this utility would come in the form of a buff rather than summons. More summon utility would just encourage the bot scenario.

Maybe if pet focuses didnt go in the same geometrical progression of 3% a step it would help. if it was 3% per pet damage inc 1-3, and then jumped to 5% 4-5 and 6% 6-7....

...
Better resist mods
Another type of nuke (resistwise)
Increased crits on rains
Pet having ac
better Petheal
Summoned armor
Petfire
Scars of sigil=awesome, more of this plz
Manadrain? Extend manastorm line
additions to elemental form line
A fire rain past 55
10% increase on damage (ALL)
Companion resists
Magic focus!
Share aggro
Lower cast times!
Wizzy crit aa's w/the exception of primals
...

Another? more debuffs?...
Also it'd be nice to look at the gulf between 63 and relic pets. It's pretty big from what I've seen so far with the relic pet, even bigger than I had thought it would be.