Updates needed for Magician "of the Many" line due to 6/13/23 Test patch notes

Scope: Address and quantify the spell damage and usage of the Magician “of the many” line as a result of the June 13th, 2023 Test patch notes. This post will focus on the following spells: Shock of Many, Jolt of Many, and Clash of Many and primarily impacts TLP players (such as those on the Aradune server who are mid Underfoot). Additional impacts to damage done by all pets impacted by the updated pet AAs should be reviewed, but that data was not reviewed and is outside the scope of this review.

Patch Note: - “Updated all spells in the Shock of Many spell line to have only 3 damage tiers and to require significantly fewer in-combat pets per tier.”

Assumption: Given that multiple classes swarm pet AAs are being impacted by other patch notes, I expect updates to this mechanic are going to be changed regardless of feedback. Therefore, proposed resolutions to the damage and usage gaps created by the update will be focused on updating the “of the many” spells and not removing the swarm pet AA updates.

The TLDR:
The change to the “of the Many” spell line has had a drastic impact on Magician damage on TLPs resulting in, conservatively, a 40% reduction in overall damage output in a raid environment. To resolve this, update “of the Many” maximum damage values of Shock, Jolt, and Clash “of the Many” to the following values: (see “Supporting Documentation” below for details)

As noted below in the “Resolution” section, the proposed updates are based on making a consistently playable class throughout the impacted expansions / levels. The proposed updates have a precedent set from the past 4 expansions (starting at live) based on a damage comparison of “Bolt of…” to “...of the many.”

Supporting Documentation:

Support: Damage done by Shock of Many, Jolt of Many, and Clash of Many has been reduced significantly due to the change. As an example, Jolt of Many (level 82), at a maximum of 10 pets, has been reduced from a base damage of 24,025 to 6,162, a ~74% reduction on the spell tooltip. Other “of the many” spells, such as those from the past 4 expansions, have not been impacted by the patch changes as their maximum damage remains unchanged

In a raid environment with relatively few mechanics, the 74% reduction in Jolt of Many is resulting in, conservatively, at least a 40% reduction in overall damagewhen parsing out all damage done by the Magician (swarm pets, raid procs, static pet, etc). An example of this is located below this section.
Unlike “of the many” spells starting at 92, these spells added all ranks together to calculate the damage output resulting in the 24,025 number listed. Starting at 92, damage was increased per rank to compensate for the removal of the additive effect.

Resolution: Update the base damage of the 3 most impacted “of the many” to be comparable to live numbers. For the past 4 expansions (starting at live and going backwards) “of the many” is 2.226 times the amount of the respective “Bolt of…” spell in that xpac. The “Bolt of…” was used as the comparative nuke as Spears and other nukes are not available in the SoF and SoD/UF expansions.This results in the updated damage numbers posted in the “TLDR” portion of this post. Support for the 2.226 multiplier is listed below:



Raid damage output reduction example based on a relatively stable, Underfoot era boss with proposed “of the many” damage decrease.



*The Rumbling Servant damage located here is due to the initial few damage caused when casting the spell. It is likely a proc went off, or other mechanic, to put this number at ~1594, however the 0.03% impact in this example is statistically insignificant.

Unlike the FTE nonsensical arguments, this is significant... I'd say this probably needs a copy n' paste into the test patch notes thread.

Agreed that something needs to be done but you are still proposing a huge nerf to the spell, that doesnt happen to monks why should it happen to mages who had to live at the bottom of the parse on raids for over a year by sof. please just revert changes on the first 3 spells in the line.

Where are mages parsing on raids during those levels?

Throw those numbers on the Update thread as well. Its pretty trash to be a mage on TLP and wait a year to finally start being competitive with dps only to findout that your DPS is being nerfed into the ground.

Do we think this is a intentional change? or simply the spell was realigned to current live spell language without realizing that older Of Many spells were cumulative and then changed in the later levels but with a included DPS increase to compensate?

Even with that mage would still be competitive from SoF through HoT, but VoA through TBM are going to be really painful. Clash of Many was really carrying mage until EoK when the of Many focus AA line unlocks.

Thank you for the additional data points. I haven’t personally played past where Aradune currently is (Underdoot), but can see the immediate and apparently somewhat long lasting impacts of this change on the viability of being competitive until TBM. The thought above was to keep in mind feasibility and consistency, but the EoK synergy sounds like it is that important. Keeping these spells unchanged would be an ideal solution. Just looking for multiple options so that the class is playable for many months to come prior to EoK.

i think these changes might be an attempt at reducing raid lag for live servers ... not sure if tlp gets the same issue but the lag on live in some events is really horrid

@Daybreak Devs please revert the change on the spells, but keep the changes on the quantity of swarm pets.
This is a huge un-needed nerf that has a lot of Magicians upset.

@Daybreak devs , this may be the best write up I have ever seen on a change. It is completely straight forward and logical without any bias. Can we please get someone in here to address this issue? There are mages across all the TLPs that are now talking about quitting due to the amount of time they have put into their mages just being ripped from them. Why is this even being changed all these years later? Kinda nuts

Ooof. I need to go back and edit some 'It gets better' posts I made for early TLP casters.

Let's not pretend that mages aren't typically way overpowered in SoF, mostly due to this spell line.

This is extremely disappointing to read about as a Mischief Mage. The one expansion I was told I might have a chance to parse near the top on is now nerfed. I work my off in raids and have been consistently and handedly beaten by monks, zerks, wizards, rogues, rangers and even warriors. Edit: I left out Bards

My alt rogue with way less gear AA and effort handedly outperforms my mage by simply autoattacking and autoskilling backstab with an occasional disc.

Maybe mages are/were overpowered in SoF but if you want to open that can of worms lets talk about monks in every single expansion to date.

Is it just me or do casters get dealt a bad hand in the TLP world? I feel like I jump through hoops to do mediocre dps at best.

After HoT Mages use different DD spells in their rotation:
Bolt of DD is replaced with Spear of DD. In HoT they've introduced Spear of Magma, which is more powerful than Bolt of Ryolite and since then Bolf of DD came out of rotation.
Every expansion since Alaris encourages to use of Many and Spear in the rotation and if there is an extra spell casting slot than the Spear from the previous expansion is more powerful than Bolf of DD from the current expansion. Essentially Bolt of DD got deprecated to be used as clicky spell from the summoned orb.

This latest change only affects SoF-SoD mages and it only corrects the old-time oversight when Of Many damage was added up by tiers instead of current individual tier damage. Get used to it - starting HoT the whole spell line up and dynamics will change to the current state.

This is awful! Currently in TBM on Mangler and having to use Clash of many (level 80s spell) rather than 100s spell as the cumulative effect is lost in newer versions which ruins our dps. Now this is going to happen across the whole line and make it worse again!?

Please upgrade the damage FAR FAR more to fix this. I understand the lag and wanting less checks of pets and spell lines and we are all on board with that but not when my dmg is nerfed.

Necros currently are doubling and sometimes tripling DPS of mages. This is going to break dps encounters if we are just taking a nerf.

Here is a DPS encounter from last night. 105 Mage: Average hit 418k. Do not ruin us!

I mean that is well and good. The game beyond HoT is tuned that way.

But in SoF and SoD I am just supposed to be ok with a 40% dmg reduction versus having a couple expansion to finally shine a little?

That just sucks. Like half a year of sucking. No thanks.

Well, just an example: they have nerfed necro epic and the game went on. And they've nerfed ripost mechanics and the game went on. And now they are nerfing mage advantage (which is out of line in the first place) and mages will be unhappy, but the game will go on.
Wait for a day when they nerf SK, Shaman and Bard epics (those still have the sizeable effect even in current NoS expansion, meanwhile almost all other classes' epics got stashed away as useless). That will be the day - the whining will go through the roof!

It's clear the cumulative damage of the earlier expansion spells was a bug that is getting fixed.

Posting further evidence that a level 87 HoT spell was much stronger than a level 102 TDS spell won't help.

I wonder if Karmana will be the new shorthand for self class nerfs?

I mean ... blatantly showing that a spell 15 levels below what is current is blowing away all other spells in your arsenal ... pretty much proves they are making the right choice.

Jeeze there's a lot of salty people here that mages were actually good for a couple of expansions.