I bought the new expansion way back when but haven't been able to log in, since. I haven't stepped foot in any new zones, etc., then. I've been glancing at a few posts around here and keep seeing mention of "another nerf since the last one" and so forth. Any old-timer (or new-timer) who can give me a realistic assessment of how our beloved pets fare these days? I've played mostly molo for some time, now, and wonder if I can make a dent in the new expansion group game. I can't play for any long stretches of time anymore but would like to give it a go if the sky hasn't fallen. I miss Norrath. =P And what is the story behind our rains? I always liked them but heard from someone who heard that they took some kind of hit, too. Bara
Last I heard of mages was they got their pet bumped up, nothing since. Guess what. EoK is an expansion with an extremely high reward/effort ratio, everybody likes it. Not playing this one, especially if you are more on the casual side, is meh. PS Actually, last heared from mages was some childish mockery when tanks, esp SKs, lost some of their most op abilities not too long ago.
With appropriate pet focus, a magician can molo an EOK trash mob with effort. Rains were reduced to only crit something like 40% of the time. Don't quote me on the number. I personally no longer use rains because I don't want the aggro when I fight two at once.
Not reduced crit rate, per se. Capped, at the passive crit rate at the time the cap was introduced, which coincided with stackable crit size bonuses, so that ADPS & discs (particularly First Spire) wouldn't end up going absolutely nuts with what remains a fabulously efficient and high damage option ... at those times when ADPS & discs are not running. It takes a bit of math that I don't have handy to sort out which & how much ADPS it takes to make uncapped Spears and things higher dps than Rains. Eliminating them entirely is mostly justifiable with normal pace of play, but contingent on maintaining the boosts that straight nukes need.
That's just completely false. Passive crit rate has been 58% for Mages since long before the rain nerf, and rains are capped at 40%. Pretty certain that's the textbook definition of a reduction in crit rate, although they were also capped since they can't be increased past that 40%.
I've been pretty happy with my mage in EoK. They got a couple of nice spells (chaotic, fire orb) and the pet swarm AA commands are awesome.
I found on my mages, with the new EoK spells, it appears my sustained has gone up pretty significantly but my top end burn hasn't gone up quite as much. I'm also not with an enchanter, so I haven't been able to test a max burn or anything. The last time I raided one however was back in CotF and I think a lotta things have changed since then. I'm probably smooshing the wrong buttons now It also seems like pets have kinda been smoothed out, like the differences between EM18 and EM24 now are slight. Overall I still like my mage, but these frogs in HH Seb over on Test are just chewing the pets up pretty handily. One mob is nothing, but you tend to end up with 3 a lot and they just destroy a pet. At least my SK doesn't seem to mind! Oh yea and that 10 charge fire orb is just nasty, keep it on your bar recast it continuously, its your best dps! If you look at DPS as cast time vs output that is...
Yeah being able to keep 3 remoreless pets rolling and slam each new mob with them from the start is pretty great. I always hated seeing the remoreless pets stand there when the mob dies. Turns them from graphically intense DoTs to true minions.
