I thought about an idea for the elemental barrage spell that kinda runs the same gambit as the elemental fusion. In that the spell cast changes with the elemental form your in. So if your in Air form you would cast a magic based spell, fire - fire and so on. Recast would be the same, damage would just be the 4 separate spells combined so 1600 base and it would still have the -175 resist adjust.
My thoughts for this idea are that in mid to higher end fights mobs will have a really high resist for at least 1 of the 4 element types which causes a lot of partial resists and a good loss of dps. Mages so far only get fire and magic based spells and if the mob is really resistant to those two we're kinda screwed. By having the barrage focused to the form type you could have the option of having a disease/poison and ice type spell at your disposal.
This is a problem. One of many with the barrage spell. Here is a list of the others in no particular order
1. Bad lure, -175 v standard level 50 lures and normal necro spells, both of which kick it's ass.
2. Slightly more mana efficient than the wizard spell Lure of the Elements (by about .1, woo).
3. To max it's damage you need 4 different elemental foci, and various tomes we don't use.
4. Recast. Are you kidding me?
Now I can see there being a problem with choosing between the dps spell and the resists gained from the AA form, but chances are if resists matter for the fight you probably wouldnt be using barrage for the fight given the partial resists to that type (Thinking like fire form in ToT, water if PoFrost, etc.). Just a thought, toss out some agree/disagree/not even possible to code type things and lets discuss.
Yes. Honestly you could just make it be the opposite of the form, but idk.
I think the idea is a neat one, but it honestly needs to be a better spell. Right now it's about 80 base more than bladewind, and a crappy lure (referring to the resist adjust. .1 better mana efficiency really doesn't cut it for a 125 resist disparity with even cr, with a high mana cost, and a dd (which= more aggro, which we cannot wipe).
If we're stuck on the DD theme, which I think is a huge mistake, it would probably serve better as a similar spell to scars of sigil which you mention later on. To clarify I'm still talking about it having the same shifting nature.
As for the murk spell "Altuning Rod", for the most part is useless. I've had it since T6, I've been asked by a dps for it once, and then never again (Though i have casted it on casters before just to watch their hp's take a huge hit
). I've come up with a couple alternates that I could see being very usefull to mages:
Yes, the best use I have come up with for these rods is to give them to casters I am mad at, who then think they are modrods, and click them without checking.
The only time I have had melee's ask for them the request was laced with heavy sarcasm.
A new quick cast spell along the same lines as Scars of Sigil, because mages spells take a long time to cast and could use an upgraded/alternate for it. Thinking along the lines of a ice/poison or disease (Earth) based spell. Around the same cast time, maybe a bit higher damage/mana cost. This would give the mage (again) an alternate to the fire/magic spells and something that we could use to get damage in fast when needed.
We have an alternative already. Runic monster summoning. Pretty sure chaincasting moon comet counts as both another type of damage, and incredible. That being said I'd love an upgraded scars of sigil. Mainly because you can toss it in between rains with little time lapse in the chain. But I think the idea is better suited to replacing elemental barrage.
Other idea is along the sames lines as the shadownight veil series. In which when cast you get a buff and during the duration a % of your agro generated goes to your pet. Since mages have no way to loose agro (jolt/Fd/concuss), this would give them a bit more room to breath so we're not always knocking on the door of taking agro.
While this is interesting, and I like the concept alot, I like it for much different reasons. If you're raining you're pretty much not going to take aggro provided someone tanky is alive and awake ( and by tanky I'm going to throw in most melee dps for that category as well). Even with chaining dd's you pretty much have to work for it if you want to grab aggro.
It would be really neat to have a way to work for aggro on the pet rather than just throwing it on and crossing your fingers.
I would say there are very few mage friendly Raid Zones.
Certainly NOT Frost - there are quite a number of totally magic immune mobs if I remember correctly and not UC either where the AE's regularly wipe out the Pets.
Obviously there ARE Mage friendly fights within the zones but I would NOT classify either of the zones you mention as being Mage friendly.
I would be interested to know of ANY fight that could be classified as Rogue or Monk unfriendly that is not also Mage unfriendly.
Prison I guess is pretty Mage friendly.
I would say you are very very very wrong. If I can keep my pet alive through old eyes sans companion resist tomes, I really don't see a problem with ae's post the availability of them. I also didn't have a problem keeping tacotown alive for the majority of undercity fights. Though granted, I have not done the boss there.
There are some magic immune mobs in frost. Some. Not nearly all of them. Also I'm pretty sure the giant pile of whitecons to blast the hell out of are pretty friendly, and everything else cringing in fear from being lit on fire makes up for the few things you cannot attack with spells.
ToT is not friendly, but it's not unfriendly either. Torment is harsh for a mage at that tier though, happens.
Just as a side note I originally planed to ask for the have the mage archaic changed back to a single target DD (rains become more and more useless the higher tier you get due to the fight mechanics, I'll give examples in a sec.) but didn't really go with it since it's great for a exp and some raid fights. This is a big problem, by the time i got mine we were steadily raiding spires and sanctum. I finished it, scribed it, smiled, then un-mem'd it for a Single target DD for the boss fight, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one...
14 out of the 20 raid encounters we were steadily doing at that time I couldn't/wouldnt rain for any number of reasons, movement, cast time, adds, CC, proximity, etc. Now that we're in Tur' Ruj it's even worse, I can count the number of times I can rain on one hand. Now let me just say I prefer these kinds of fights, so much more fun for everyone, but it completely takes our most powerful spell out of the raid scene. I'm stuck using the same spells I had at T3.
I can understand that everyone cannot be good at everything, it would just be nice to have something to mix it up a bit and give us another option (we are elemental masters for a reason lol).
That would be absolutely horrible for a whole host of reasons. Most of them properly outlined in the thread where we got it changed from a dd to a rain, and the 50 other threads for years before that explaining how crap the mage archaic was at the time, and how we were essentially bad wizards.
Also unless sanctum has changed extremely heavily, and the first bit of spires has as well I really don't know what you're talking about. Raining wasn't really much of a problem, even on drakes. You do have to be a bit clever with your positioning from the outset though. This is taking into account the first strat for drakes, as well as the second. I'm guessing you know what I'm talking about by that. Pbaoe's were pretty effective on the one fight where I remember proximity being an issue, which filled me with no small amount of sick glee.
We have those options tbh, monster summonings are absolutely incredible, and give us access to a type of damage that we just do not have normally.
Hell half of the time you're not only stuck with a spell from T3 as you put it but also stuck with a spell from level 60 (maelstrom of electricity).
Also I find it hilarious you're complaining about that, since the spell is a relic, and you only get 3 spells above it so far. Pretty sure the entire reason for elemental damage was to add scalability to casters without having to add a new spell every few tiers.
TLDR;
1. Elemental barrage=> Booooo
2. Scars of sigil => Yay! more like that.
3. Gruplok rods=> Booooooo. Though entertaining if you are a fan of practical jokes.
4. Silks and runic monster summoning are tight as hell. A++ would cast again.
5. A nuke that changes based on form is a very interesting idea, and I like it, even though being dd based I don't think it will see much use.
6. Seriously, dd's?
7. Pet veil idea interesting. For more reasons than one. I like it.
8. More stuff, mostly responses.
