What should be done for L65 Mage?

[Moraelintz]

I think our dps is fairly consistant with where we should be, especially in groups. In exp groups where the tank is mass pulling, 3,4,5 etc.. mobs we are king in dps. Especially since our rain 'bug' if used well can auto target the next set when the first one dies. From what I have seen (up to around T4-6) we can do pretty good damage on raids. I still think the biggest concern is the pet survivability. The pet is free melee damage. In encounters that are super magic resistant we can still dps and help out in the form of pet, summon pets, host of elements.

 

[Volkier]

You may well be right Thade that I have been concentrating exclusively on damage dealing.

But step (1) is to get people to recognize that as it stands Mage is a deeply non valued (rightly or wrongly) character that Groups/Raid are more than happy to do without.

Step (2) is to decide what to do about it.

From a personal standpoint I have a deep loathing of the "utility" tag. You seem to get a load of shitty jobs to do in exchange for which you get less dps - lose/lose. Please Please Please take them off me and give me more dps.

I do not believe simply giving a more survivable pet will change anything.

I dunno, from the 12 pages of this discussion, I gathered that mages do absolutely fine - providing their pet survives. Problem right now is that in a lot of situations the pet doesn't, so the solution here does look fairly simple.

Besides, I dunno about you, but I mage a mage, after reading through pages of information on wiki / forum / talking to a bunch of people BECAUSE I wanted a class that has utility (summoned stuff), is a heavy pet user (relies heavily on pet) and is fair, but not a full on dps class (like a rogue / ranger). Would it not be a tad unfair to other people who chose the class for similar reasons, if they suddenly gained bigger nukes at the expense of utility / pet survivability?

 

[Tesselajnen]

Bridger, reroll a burst DPS class. Cus that is obviously what you want to be, not a pet class that realizes what their pet is all about.

From what I can see you want burst DPS, that makes 20k damage in 1 sec to whatever mob you are fighting. You do not see what damage a mage and his/hers pet does, nor do you seem to care about your pet at all. This makes me kind of sad, specially since I 4 char a lot with my hubby that plays a mage and I got a even better geared and archaiced mage in guild that does a lot of damage during our raids.

I see what both theese guys do since I parse everything nowadays (since I got my runic, I live for the parse) and I really like what I see when it comes to their DPS. (Also from Nwaij reply to my hubbys input in this thread, damn I want to see what the mage runic summoning does with the DPS! How much extra is it? Damn Satrig, farm your last shitty piece so I can start to cry some about you beating the shit out of my DPS.... Or whatever will happen when you get that shell piece =P)

 

[Bridger]

I think I am being misunderstood here.

I readily acknowledge that when conditions are right Mage will do more than adequate damage. However conditions are not right far too often for Mage to be a desirable character and the damage they do in favourable conditions is not sufficient to compensate for that.

Also mage is an incredibly squishy character and the damage they do does not compensate for that.

I am far from ignoring the pet. I recognise that the pet is an important part of the reason that Mage does not scale up in the way that other classes do. I have just this instant got my half million charm. This gives a useful boost to AC/HP/Resists and crit.

BUT how does this scale me up in relation to other classes?
Increase in Pet damage zero
Increase in Pet HP zero
Increase in Pet resistance zero
Increase in my overall damage from one additional crit (assuming pet is doing say 30% of my overall damage) is 0.7 x .3333 say .23%

So while other classes will expect to get a 1% increase in damage a mage will get less than a quarter percent.

While I think mage vending machine activities are shitty I don't actually object to doing them. What I do resent is that is a reason to set my dps at a lower level than other classes. If you were to say that in compensation for having to hand out sweeties to the troups you should get EXTRA dps then that would make a lot more sense.

 

[Dinadass]

I think I am being misunderstood here.

I readily acknowledge that when conditions are right Mage will do more than adequate damage. However conditions are not right far too often for Mage to be a desirable character and the damage they do in favourable conditions is not sufficient to compensate for that.

Also mage is an incredibly squishy character and the damage they do does not compensate for that.

I am far from ignoring the pet. I recognise that the pet is an important part of the reason that Mage does not scale up in the way that other classes do. I have just this instant got my half million charm. This gives a useful boost to AC/HP/Resists and crit.

BUT how does this scale me up in relation to other classes?
Increase in Pet damage zero
Increase in Pet HP zero
Increase in Pet resistance zero
Increase in my overall damage from one additional crit (assuming pet is doing say 30% of my overall damage) is 0.7 x .3333 say .23%

So while other classes will expect to get a 1% increase in damage a mage will get less than a quarter percent.

While I think mage vending machine activities are shitty I don't actually object to doing them. What I do resent is that is a reason to set my dps at a lower level than other classes. If you were to say that in compensation for having to hand out sweeties to the troups you should get EXTRA dps then that would make a lot more sense.

Go parse some fights where conditions are not right and post them here. Anecdote after anecdote will not be enough to get changes made to mage DPS. You need hard numbers.

Mages being squishy has absolutely nothing to do with how much damage they should be capable of doing. Every DPS class is squishy compared to a tank. That is why tanks exist. They take the beating while you blow up the bad monsters. Any situation where you are getting hit by mobs, or the rogue is, or anything else except a tank, is a case of somebody messing up, using a sub-optimal strategy, or (very very rarely) a mechanic of that specific encounter and not in the norm. Balancing the overall DPS hierarchy around a tiny fraction of fights does not make any sense.

When I got my half million charm I got the same resist boosts as any other class, and I went from being like 3% over the crit cap to even higher. Same with ATK. Flowing thought is completely wasted for me. Melee stats on the Juggo are the exact same as the Eternal, so I didn't gain anything there. The entire increase in DPS for a monk upgrading to an Eternal is that your procs can now crit 5% of the time. My procs, even with a badass huge proc on my boots, made up less than 5% of my overall damage. A 5% increase to <5% of my DPS is less than .25% total.

There are now tomes that give your pet part of your resists, health, ac, and crit so I have no idea how you can say that a better charm that increases all of those things doesn't benefit you or your pet.

One of your main arguments is that mage utility is not enough to bring them as opposed to a different DPS class. Your proposed solution to this is to give mages more DPS than other DPS classes. So you'll do the most damage and also have utility. Why would anyone bring any DPS class except a Mage if that were the case?

 

[Boehm]

I readily acknowledge that when conditions are right Mage will do more than adequate damage. However conditions are not right far too often for Mage to be a desirable character and the damage they do in favourable conditions is not sufficient to compensate for that.

All dps have trash and boss encounters which are frustrating. This is not limited to mages.

Also mage is an incredibly squishy character and the damage they do does not compensate for that.

While I think the caster triple dip of low health, low mitigation, and no avoidance is over done, this applies to the entire archetype and not just mages. Casters only get to "burst" here to the melee dps range, and suffer huge penalties for it.
I doubt it will change. If it bothers you, make a melee.

BUT how does this scale me up in relation to other classes?
Increase in Pet damage zero
Increase in Pet HP zero
Increase in Pet resistance zero
Increase in my overall damage from one additional crit (assuming pet is doing say 30% of my overall damage) is 0.7 x .3333 say .23%

And the staff agreed there is an issue and added content for your pet.

While I think mage vending machine activities are shitty I don't actually object to doing them. What I do resent is that is a reason to set my dps at a lower level than other classes. If you were to say that in compensation for having to hand out sweeties to the troups you should get EXTRA dps then that would make a lot more sense.

You are aware that being a dps class without jolt, there is a hard cap on how high your dps scales?

 

[Cyzaine]

I think we're done here for the time being. Changes are being processed, and won't be discussed further until I start looking for volunteers to test them.