Wizard Familiar & Pet lines

[Ranmere]

Here are the current Wizard familiars:

16 Minor Familiar

Imp model -- 100 mana, 2 hour duration​

Buffs: 4 all resist, 1 mana regen, 1 health regen​

29 Familiar

Imp model -- 180 mana, 2 hour duration​

Buffs: 8 all resist, 2 mana regen, 2 health regen​

49 Protector Familiar

Drake model -- 300 mana, 2 hour duration​

Buffs: 8 all resist, 2 mana regen, 2 health regen​

Casts: slow (at least 20%, not sure what specific spell)​

49 Curative Familiar

Drake model -- 300 mana, 2 hour duration​

Buffs: 8 all resist, 2 mana regen, 2 health regen​

Casts: heals (60pt base heal)​

60 Sorcerer Familiar

Imp model -- 780 mana, 2 hour duration, costs 1 peridot​

Buffs: 8 all resists, 2 mana regen, 2 health regen​

Casts: 15% spell mimic? (unsure on %)​

65 Relic: Arcane Familiar

Drake model -- 800 mana, 6 hour duration​

Buffs: 15 all resists, 4 mana regen, 4 health regen​

Casts: 15% spell mimic + heals​

AA Allegiant Familiar (costs 6AA) -- this AA is apparently a bug from the last client transition, and should actually be the improved life fire AA

Imp model -- 0 mana, 6 hour duration​

Buffs: 30 all resists, 8 mana regen, 300 max mana, increase casting lvl by 9 (effects fizzles, maybe has other unintended effects here?), see invis​

Casts: 15% spell mimic? (unsure on %)​

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Here are some suggested improvements:

• Smoother scaling of buff components/duration:
  • Lvl 16 = 1 hour duration, 1 hp/mana regen + 4 all resists
  • Lvl 29 = 2 hour duration, 2 hp/mana regen + 8 all resists
  • Lvl 49 = 3 hour duration, 3 hp/mana regen + 12 all resists
  • Lvl 60 = 4 hour duration, 4 hp/mana regen + 16 all resists
  • Relic = 5 hour duration, 5 hp/mana regen + 20 all resists
• Rethink familiar casting -- with this I would also remove one of the two Lvl 49 familiars, leaving only 5 familiar spells.
  • Lvl 16 = no spell
  • Lvl 29 = slow
  • Lvl 49 = heal (thematically it makes more sense for the familiar to cast a rune, but it would be a drop in utility/buff slot to change)
  • Lvl 60 = mimic
  • Relic = slow + heal + mimic
• Regarding the AA familiar... it is better than the relic familiar currently - with double the mana regen and a large boost to max mana. Options there:
  • Fix the bug -- Get rid of AA familiar and bring back the Lifefire enhancement AAs
  • Keep AA familiar and put it somewhere between the Lvl 60 familiar and Relic familiar in terms of buff & utility
• Regarding spell mimic -- this seems too rare, on a long fight I'll see it go off once or twice (perhaps that changes w/ relic pet, but from asking Erude it seems not), I don't know if there is perhaps a cooldown on familiar casting or some kind of limitation in terms of what spells get mimicked, but I would recommend either:
  • Increasing the mimic rate
  • Removing this mechanic entirely and replacing it with one of the following:
    • Buff to max mana (personally I'd like to see every familiar add a small buff to max mana)
    • +spell crit (this would probably provide too much dps increase, but may be justified on relic familiar)
    • familiar casting a -resist adjust debuff (this would some raid utility?)
• Randomize textures when pet is summoned -- there's some pretty nice variety in drake/imp textures, and it would be good to see them on familiars without having to resort to illusion buff trickery.
  
  
• If you do add spell crit/max mana to the familiars I'd recommend making all the familiars cost a reagent (instead of only the lvl 60 familiar), otherwise I'd recommend removing the reagent from the lvl 60 one.
  
  
• Off the wall idea (only if AA familiar is kept) -- allow wizards with appropriate gate necks to use their familiar to port the wizard to those destinations.

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Regarding the other pet spells/AA that wizards get, there are 3

59 Flaming Sword of Xuzl -- flaming sword pet with low hp, low lvl, and low dps
65 Burning Spear of Tarhyl -- flaming spear pet with low hp, low lvl, and low dps
AA Call of Xuzl (costs 3/2/1 AA) -- swarm pets, similar to the 59 spell, with a total of 4

These are thematically odd abilities for a Wizard. Summoning things is the mage theme... enchanting things is the enchanter thing... and these abilities are somewhere in between those two. There's also the minor problem that you can't use the spells with a familiar up -- basically the main use I suspect the 59 and 65 spells get is for mass pulling grey cons that socially aggro (since they're low enough level to aggro most everything). The AA of course is useful free dps, but still thematically odd.

I'd recommend removing these from Wizards altogether -- and replacing them with:

• 59 ?? -- possibly just remove (there's no glaring lack that I noticed at this lvl in the other wizard spell lines)
• 65 Burning Spear of Tarhyl -- no name change necessary -- targeted fire-based AoE (which is currently lacking) -- as the fire-based counterpart to the lvl 64 cold-based targeted AoE Meteor Swarm
• AA Field of Destruction -- swarm pets (maybe wisps? don't know if these are in global load) that do a pb aoe then disappear. Basic idea is to make this AA more wizard-like.