Magicians next expansion

Discussion in 'Casters' started by Nylrem, Aug 5, 2019.

  1. Nylrem Augur

    Kizant started a great article for wizard requests for next expansion.

    I was looking forward to a better magician posting a similar one, but since they haven't, here's my start:

    Similar to Kiz, trying to keep this within reason, but also acknowledging we 'need some love' more so than wizards :)

    AA: For the most part, standard upgrades to our primary AA would be fine I believe, as long as they reflect the increased mob HP and DPS.

    Exceptions are:

    Companion's Aegis - not been upgraded since TDS. This should block a full melee hit from the top tier trash in group zone, per counter.

    If they hit for 45k max, then Aegis should block at least that much per counter. It also needs an increase in range. It should be equivalent to the range of Fortify Companion.

    Mend Companion - needs a massive upgrade and increase in range. It should heal the pet for at least 50% of an out of the box earth pet's HP and have the same range as Fortify Companion.

    Call of the Hero - 5 tiers, reduce cast time by 2s each tier.

    Elemental conversion - +1 tier, 120k hp for 40k mana. Mana consumption outpacing gear improvements is ALWAYS a big issue on level cap raise expansions.

    Host in the shell - Increase range to match Fortify Companion, along with standard upgrade to hit amount/overall damage.

    Host of the elements - Good grief these need serious improvements. They need a built in spell rune, or enough HP to be able to sustain a single AE from the worst raid (and remember, they don't have any mitigations). Also a tremendous boost in DPS. A 10 minute recast activated DPS AA with all the inherent issues pets have, should at least put out some DPS. 30k DPS vs raid mobs, while they're up isn't asking too much.

    Second Wind Ward - Similar to cleric's DI, except like 20x longer recast... Should heal pet to full HP, not a 25k heal.

    Servant of Ro - Similar to Host of the elements, is very underpowered. Servant of Ro bolt XXI should be around 80k damage, not 20k, if only cast every 3 seconds. The pet itself needs much higher hp so as to not get killed from the first raid mob's AE.

    Shared Health - I understand the pet is supposed to be 'shielding' us, but good grief this range is ridiculously small. If pet is on other side of mob, it's too far away sometimes. Can we get a range increase of a fair amount at least?

    Thaumaturge's Focus - Extremely limited use. Allow it to affect FIRE AND MAGIC nukes like Elemental Union used to. Hopefully, being Velious revamp, there won't be many fire immune mobs this time, so it would be completely useless if not changed...

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    Spells (will use old names):

    I believe the biggest issues are with our spells. We have many that need some major improvements.

    First and foremost, please realize nukes need higher than standard 10% upgrades. This expansion's 'standard' upgrade to nukes should probably be in the 17-18% range, if not more. If not immediately replacing Eyes of Life and Decay in this expansion, then old spells will continue to be same damage, for less mana, if only standard 10% upgrade given. Even with a 18% increase in damage, would still only be 8% increase over current damage, but likely 18% increase in mana usage...

    Level 111

    Malosinata - standard upgrade

    Shield of Scales - standard upgrade

    Volley of Sand - Almost never used... please change to instant cast, and would be viable at least occasionally, raid trash clearing, etc.

    Burnout - standard upgrade, however... Rank 3 should get significantly higher upgrades every time for this spell. Raid mobs significantly mitigate pet melee compared to group mobs.

    Embodiment of air - standard upgrade. The air pet is pretty standard 'all around' pet for good reason.

    Grant Wim's armaments - Level 70 defiant gear is pretty much better than our level 110 summoned gear... Pet summoned gear should be equivalent to latest tradeskilled gear, including focuses, etc. Make summoned pet gear actually worth something again :) I am guessing this will be the most controversial of my thoughts. Decent pet gear adds a significant amount to pet. However, current summoned gear is garbage.

    Grant Loulin's heirlooms - see above, Grant Wim's Armaments. They should actually be worth a darn, and a noticeable and parseable difference with summoned gear kit.

    Dissident Companion - Great idea, but poor implementation. DPS through pet is sketchy/unreliable. When the buff doesn't stack with a primary DPS AA (Frenzied Burnout), costs a ton of mana, and has pet restrictions/detriments, then it's fraught with problems. It's just too much mana, for not enough (or any) benefit over a nuke.

    The simplest solution would be to make the haste portion of this spell a full one minute with focuses, for 100% uptime, and preferably stack with Frenzied Burnout AA. This would make it a good spell, and it's mana cost would be appropriate.

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    Level 112

    Shield of Order - standard upgrade (in accordance to mob AE increase standard - it's our only fast refresh defense against AE)

    Beam of Molten Rhyolite - Standard upgrade

    Volley of Many - standard upgrade, with the belief that to make it 'right' would be too difficult probably? This spell has become a signature of the magician, but it continues to be an irritant that it does zero damage vs mobs with no hate lists. Bone burners, combat dummies, etc. If possible, and can make this do it's damage vs mobs without hate lists, that would be great.

    Burning Guardian - standard upgrade

    Embodiment of water - could really use some kind of boost to it's ability to hit higher ac/mitigation mobs. I don't know if it's strikethrough, or what (if so, adding good summoned gear, with strikethrough, may fix this problem). This would see almost no difference vs group play, but allow pet to do decent dps vs raid mobs with high mitigation.

    Shock of arcronite steel - standard upgrade, but please remove the .5 push back. Not that we use the spell, if can avoid it, but tired of getting blamed for moving mob (still!) (I think it's just cuz they're jealous can't blame us for pet push any more).

    Wand of burning modulation - see above, about increase in mana costs vs current spells with eyes of life and decay. Please increase accordingly.

    Auspice of Esianti - standard upgrade

    Summon Firebound Orb - not been upgraded since level 102. Probably need 40k ish on nuke cast for appropriate upgrade.

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    Level 113

    Repudiate the Unnatural - has fallen far, far behind what it used to be. When the proc portion was introduced, when it proc'd it's trigger, it would drop a trash mob's hp by 50%. An increase to about 1.5 million damage for repudiate destruction's 12% chance proc would be appropriate.

    Promised alleviation - This should be a much more significant heal, due to lack of focuses/AA etc. Approximately half the pet's total HP, is what it should heal for.

    Beam of knives - standard upgrade

    Rain of Molten Rhyolite - the crit chance restriction on this line needs increased. As others have suggested, 60% is more appropriate.

    Blistering Sands - exact same as volley, almost never used, however, make instant cast, and could be useful during trash clearing or very fast killing groups.

    Blistering skin - Damage shields have stagnated terribly. In their heyday, they would do 1/30th of a mob's total hp, per hit. Nowadays, they're hardly worth a buff slot. Boost this to about 3,000hp damage shield, at least it would seem cool, even if it still did less than .1% of a mob's hp, per hit.

    Embodiment of fire - It's DPS has not been up to par in many years. It's by far the weakest pet, and has the weakness of depending on the majority of it's DPS to be fire nuke based, so almost no boosts, from us or others, boost it's DPS. If you could increase it's melee DPS to air pet range, it would help tremendously. It's still an obstacle to get pet within melee range, but may be worth it, if it could actually put out more melee DPS.

    Grant Wim's Armaments - The proc damage from summoned weapons is laughable, a couple hundred DPS vs todays mobs is a joke. Please consider a proc in the range of 15k ish, not 4k? Also, the hate proc weapons STILL do not keep a mob off us, using earth pet even when duel wielding. Please increase to like 10% and 10k ish raw hate. Or, alternatively, just have all summoned pet weapons proc about 400% more than they do?

    Renewal of Loulin - With the cast time of this heal, a bit higher bump to healing than standard. It's falling behind vs mob DPS as well.

    Summon Insurgent Servant - Would love to see higher than standard increase here. Summoned servant clickies aren't worth re-summoning mid fight, their DPS is far less than a nuke. Make them an AA that cost mana, and like .5s cast time, so can resummon between spell casts during a fight.

    Rhyolite stance - standard upgrade

    Korascian Bolt - standard upgrade

    Thaumatize Pet - not been upgraded since level 83. Was one of my favorite spells. Used to put at end of multibind, and soon as mob dies, it casts this, significantly increasing mana over time in group grind sessions. An upgraded version, with a slightly faster cast time, and decent, 2k ish per tick for 5 ticks buff would be good.

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    Level 114

    Aegis of Zeklor - Does not stack with AA Companion's Aegis, and AA has 12 counters instead of 9, with only very slightly less rune amount. Since it's a spell cast and consumes the time for casting a spell, it should be significantly better than AA all around. Consider increasing rune amount a bit higher than normal upgrades, and counters to 15 please.

    Embodiment of Earth - If not willing to increase rage sword hate proc, then please increase this pet's hate somehow. It takes a significant hit to DPS vs other pets, it deserves to be the best at tanking AND agro.

    Skyfire Veil - Needs greatly increased proc chance, or greatly increased buff timer. It's not really worth recasting so frequently, for such a low proc spell. Triple it's buff timer, or triple it's proc rate would be good.

    Circle of the Inferno - Damage shields are still 'free' DPS ish, but they have severely degraded since first introduced. As a defining characteristic for the class, this should be brought up to semi-relevancy vs today's mob HP pools. 3k damage wouldn't be too much.

    Iceflame Keep - Again, severely falling behind. 1,200 damage proc, please increase to like 6k ish.

    Chaotic Munificence - Please increase it's buff time to like 15min base. It's not a strong enough buff to justify it being recast mid fight during raids.

    Rain of Knives - Same as fire rain. Please increase the crit chance cap to at least 60%. It's far too limiting otherwise.

    Burning Blast - Can we get the timers unlinked for new and previous PB AE spells? To be able to cast new, then older versions, like for spears?

    Grant frostbound paradox - Increase damage and reduce cast time on this please. Just isn't worthwhile to recast during a fight due to cast time/overall damage. Slightly higher damage than standard upgrade, with 1.0s cast time would be good.

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    Level 115

    Monster Summoning - Never used as an actual fighting pet any more. Make stats, DPS, etc equivalent to water pet please, just copy/paste water pet to it. Increase mana cost accordingly would be fine :)

    Chaotic Inferno - standard upgrade

    Reckless Servant - standard upgrade

    Remote Reckless Servant - The spell stinks, as is... If could somehow get rid of the terrible targeting ring, and just have it summon on the mob we are currently targetted on, would be awesome!

    Spear of Molten Arcronite - standard upgrade

    Burning Symbiosis - standard upgrade (taking into account mana cost increases)

    Gather Capability - standard upgrade (taking into account mana cost increases)

    Summon Insurgent Minion - see Summon Insurgent Servant

    Rhyolitic Bodyguard - standard upgrade

    Firebound Covenant - standard upgrade

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    New ideas:

    I am not a fan of increasing DPS through pets. Their damage is fairly unreliable, mitigated/resisted more, not able to be increased via aDPS stuff from others, etc.

    Our upgrades and new DPS things should be centered around our more reliable nuking ability, IMO.

    We have no ability to increase crit chance, other than First Spire.

    We should be able to, on our own, hit 100% crit chance with activated abilities. Or, if receiving others, extend our high crit chance spreading out our personal stuff. Kind of like wizards can.

    Something like, oh, I don't know:

    Elemental Destruction: This ability, when activated, increases the chance that your next 24 direct damage spells will deal critical damage by 45%, and increases the mana cost of these spells by 25%.

    and/or

    Elemental Devastation: This ability, when activated, increases the chance that your next 50 direct damage spells will deal critical damage by 45% and the damage of your critical spells by 60% but increases their mana cost by 50% for 3 minutes 12 seconds.


    We also should get an activated AA that increases our crit damage. We have none currently.

    Something like:

    Boost of the Archmagus: This ability, when activated, increases the damage dealt by your critical direct damage spells by 160% for 1 minute 30 seconds.

    Just my thoughts, please feel free to add/give the developers other ideas, discuss why these stink, etc :)
    Renotaki, Sancus and kizant like this.
  2. Piemastaj Augur

    To be blunt, the reason why one of these has not been posted is because they essentially get nothing done. These also generally bring about trolls and muddy the threads to the point of being pointless.

    Outside of some of the misinformation here, it is an overall decent list. The better ideas have already been sent off by Sancus or myself in 1 form or another within the last few weeks (if not previous years ect).

    If the devs read anything generally I have found PMs work best here. However, with the most recent expansion I fully expect any and all ideas to be not implemented and we see our normal 20% or so boost to spells we have gotten. This plays off of Dzarn's post from last year expansion time, I would love to be wrong though.

    Just my 2cp as to why one of these was not created sooner, it was done in PMs as to get a better and more concise listing to them.
    IblisTheMage and Sancus like this.
  3. Cragzop Cranky Wizard

    Nice list...

    ...but it's hard to tell what you would really like vs what is just listed because you have pretty much commented on it all.

    What if you picked 3-5 things that are most important to you and how you play your mage to start a conversation?

    From my non-mage view point, group mages are doing well. I see a number of them and they can handle current content. Raid mages could use a similar boost to what all casters need (question: how can you tell what is the best position a caster can achieve on a raid parse? answer: count the melee and hybrids and add one).

    I do think that casters need a re-examination of critical changes and boosts to critical damage vs what melee get because there seems to be a disconnect...but that's not a mage-only thing.
  4. Ibadan Kun'Tirel Augur

    Any list without maloseniac eminence upgrade, and non fire nukes that are competitive, is missing the mark :)

    Other than that pretty decent list you have going here.
  5. Mintalie Augur

    Yes and yes, but especially yes on the malosenic eminence.
  6. Cicelee Augur

    I want to share my thoughts and ideas. But I do not want Sancus and PMJ to be mad or make fun of me. So instead I will go stand in a corner.
    IblisTheMage and kizant like this.
  7. Nylrem Augur

    I'm no developer, but I would imagine most of the requests wouldn't be hard at all to implement, and very few would be any kind of major DPS improvements, so would like most of them implemented...

    Magician in the group game is, as has long been, very powerful. It's the raid environment that we're hurting in, IMO. And, understandably, is hard to balance without being too powerful in group game. Thus, my many requests that would improve the magician in the raid environment, without really helping the group magician much.

    Most important to me, in order of top 5 wish? 1 of which, are probably significant development time needed, guessing. AA could essentially copy/paste ones already in existence, heal/buff range should just be changing a couple numbers somewhere. Ideally, pet HP for clickies and AA pets would be just changing some numbers. I would guess most significant time investment would be pet damage vs high AC/mitigation mobs.

    Drastically improve all pet damage vs high AC/mitigation mobs.
    New, activated AA to improve crit chance
    New, activated AA to improve crit damage
    Drastically improve all short term, clicky, AA, etc pets HP to not die to the first AE during raids
    Pet buff and heal AA to have longer range

    Definite oversight on malo eminence upgrade, yeah, my bad. Still wouldn't make my top 5 though, for me, since usually pull with malo AA.
  8. menown Augur

    ??
    Sancus and Scornfire like this.
  9. Piemastaj Augur

    I am going to assume this is in regards to our normal pet doing abysmal damage on raid mobs? Because our Swarms do decently well on raid targets, obviously it could be better but in particular our normal pets are trash. This (unless it is some crazy coding where they bug out pets on higher AC mobs) has nothing to do with the pets damaging the mob. It has everything to do with the pets not doing anything for 12+ seconds at a time. Through whatever is causing the issue, pets do not even have the option to swing a good majority of the time so boosting their DMG on higher AC/mitigation mobs won't do anything until they swing much more frequently.
    Ibadan Kun'Tirel and Sancus like this.
  10. Sancus Augur

    This is a good list overall. Unfortunately, as we saw in TBL and subsequent posts/Q&A's, class development resources are extraordinarily limited, and the level increase will exacerbate that issue. That said, I do want to highlight what I view as the major concerns for our class (admittedly, skewed towards a raiding perspective):

    Pet lag: This is likely the single biggest issue facing our raiding viability. As Pie mentioned, the reason pets don't perform well in raids is lag-related, it isn't because of a lack of ATK or Accuracy. More info here (also upvote if you haven't!), but essentially when zones lag, the server stops processing our pet swings. It adds a dramatic amount of variability to our DPS, and its severity is obfuscated by its inconsistency (causing people to see high Mage parses that aren't reflective of what we do on average). Until this is fixed, any upgrades to pet DPS aren't going to translate properly into raid DPS increases.

    Firebound Orb: I doubt we're getting a new version of this with a level cap increase, but I think an upgrade should be heavily considered for the following expansion. Furthermore, I think this line needs a focus AA. It has 28k base damage, comparable to our best Spear (29k) when it was introduced. Next expansion, with a 20% upgrade, our top Spear will be 43k, on top of additional focus AA ranks that have further widened the gap. This spell was a boon to the class when introduced, and it really should receive a focus AA (via SPA 302, since 413 doesn't work for it) to keep its damage in line with overall increases. A post-focus base damage of 40-42k is a good target (40-50% focus or upgrade).

    Short burn: I don't agree we need as much as is listed in the OP, but I think there's a noticeable gap in our activated AAs given our lack of any real short-duration burn other than (improved) twincast. Elemental Union was far too powerful given the multiplicative nature of SPA 461, but adding something more measured (e.g. a reasonable crit damage modifier that lasts for 90-180 seconds w/ increased mana cost) would make sense.

    SPA 124 Modifiers: We have a lot of SPA 124 modifiers - Flames of Power, Heart of Flames, Elemental Flames, and, as a negative mod, Flames of Weakness. These are all pretty weak given their damage doesn't crit, but worse, they also all don't stack with each other or with bard aria. Furthermore, if Flames of Weakness is running, it completely negates the benefit of any other SPA 124 modifiers for its duration. Some of these modifiers should be changed to other options (SPA 507 being the primary one, given it is comparable to 124).

    Stagnating pet AAs: A lot of our pet AAs need to be upgraded to maintain their relative power. Companion's Aegis and Mend Companion have particularly stagnated and need more than a standard upgrade just to do as well as they used to. Swarm pets, as Nylrem mentioned, also don't have sufficient HP to survive AEs currently, and it gets worse every expansion they aren't upgraded. At the very least they need more HP, and ideally they'd also receive some sort of spell rune (in addition to DPS increases).

    I don't think we're hurting, but we absolutely do have mechanical issues, as well as a number of aspects of our class that will continue to deteriorate if we just receive standard baseline upgrades. We, like other casters, saw very little in the way of upgrades in TBL, and we will be hurt by the loss of Eyes of Life and Decay at 115. There are other specific tweaks I want (and I sent an AA list in a PM a few weeks ago that Pie helped with, as well as posting one last year that hasn't changed much), but I think the above five points are the ones I most want to see addressed and are realistic changes to make (other than maybe fixing pet lag).

    As an aside, I also am sad the trade-off nature of our class has fallen by the wayside to some extent. For pets we choose Earth for tanking and Water for DPSing, and occasionally Air for very niche in-between scenarios. Fire is never used. For our Heart lines, Stone/Ice are minuscule relative to incoming damage, and Flames is always used over Vapor. With Elemental Forms, they're really weak (ignoring instances where Earth is useful because it's broken) to the point it doesn't matter what choice you make the vast majority of the time. I'm not going to harp on this too much more because I don't think there's development time to create four viable options with valid niches/use cases, but it nonetheless makes me a bit sad as trade-offs are a huge part of what makes a class interesting.
    IblisTheMage likes this.
  11. Tucoh Augur

    As someone who only boxes a mage in a melee focused group the most important thing that mages need is a spell that for about 30s lets them inhabit their pet and gives them berserker level damage output for that period.
    Sancus likes this.
  12. IblisTheMage Augur

    Pathfinder Summoner archetype lvl 20 ability? :) (Pen & Paper RPG)
    Tucoh likes this.
  13. Shadowmage New Member

    I agree that Host of the elements and Servant of Ro are not that great. To be honest I would like both of them replaced. I would like to see them replaced with something like Elemental Swarm aa with a number of ranks every five lvls. Would be nice to cut down on the number of pets spawned to like 1 or 2.
    I know it might mess up volley spells with number of pets but those spells could be adjusted and it might help cut down on some lag.

    On same timer and can cast every 30 seconds. Maybe even a small mana cost.

    Elemental Swarm Fire: Summons a fire elemental similar to normal fire pet that roots itself and nukes for 30 seconds.
    Elemental Swarm Air: melees and stuns every 3 or 6 seconds.
    Elemental Swarm Earth: melees and roots every 6 seconds
    Elemental Swarm Water: melees and heals targets target every six seconds.

    Arcane Distillect- Need new auras for higher lvls (lvl 100 and 115?). Add some ae haste to pets and/or procs.
  14. Piemastaj Augur

    Disagree very much so.
    Cicelee, Sancus and Mintalie like this.
  15. Nyar New Member

    I wouldn't mind more control on swarm pets, like a Back/Ghold buttons for Reckless Servants, or at the very least, a dismiss for those cases where you can't even redirection them.

    The Reckless Servants are way too reckless sometimes and position stuff awkwardly if you're hit by an aoe, given that ghold doesn't affects them.