It would be fantastic if Dicho was castworthy. Maybe something related to Fickle and Chaotic: maybe Chaotic should be the continuation of the Fickle line, with Fickle AA applying to Chaotic? We have a number of spells that are being continued that make little sense to me. For example Blistering Skin, a 4 ht 5K damage shield. Compare this to Skyfire Veil, 48 reactive hits for 2k. I don’t think any of them are used, maybe I am wrong. I miss the DS/paaive damage aspect a bit, maybe it is just nostalgia.
I have been asking for an upgrade to Surge of Shadow, but not many others seem interested in damage shields anymore. Skyfire Veil is even a downgrade compared to Surge which is 5 expansions old... No clue how any dev can look at our Skin line damage shields with a straight face.
This isn't a comprehensive list of ideas, just a few broad points (the first two sort of being responses): 1. I think a Surge upgrade would be cool tbh. It would need significantly upgraded damage to become more relevant, but I still think that's the best DS-esque spell line we've gotten and was sad to see it go. 2. Having a bad Dichotomic was detrimental in TBM, but IMO it's actually better for the class at this point. A lot of classes are relatively dependent on largely unmodifiable spells that won't be upgraded. Unless the devs do an expansion with upgraded Dichotomics (which I personally think is unlikely), development on TBM spells is pretty much over at this point too. So I'd really rather let that horse die. If they are making another round of Dicho-like spells and they want it to remain pet related, it can't be focused on our main pet because of lag. Either a swarm pet spell or a CoP-like pet aura would be cool, though. Or just a spell boost. 3. I hope they'll revisit our Magic lineup, especially if there are fire resistant mobs in the upcoming expansion (which seems likely). There are two issues that I see with it: 1. our DPS output falls far too dramatically on those mobs and 2. we lose many of our interesting class mechanics, swapping interesting spells for incredibly boring spells. I think both can be remedied by making alternatives to our Fire spells that share a cooldown and do a bit less damage. The two important ones IMO are Volley of Many and Chaotic Inferno. The former is both one of the most unique Mage spells and the way we proc Theft of Essence, and as such it's important to have in any lineup. The latter is mechanically one of the most interesting spells in our Fire rotation because of its procs. There's definitely some room to play around with the procs on a Magic version of Chaotic if the devs want (although Flames of Power isn't actually restricted to Fire spells). Also, I really think these should be made baseline. That makes our Magic weave something like RS -> Magic Volley -> Magic Chaotic -> Rain of Knives, which is a pretty cool/reasonable lineup. It has additional risk with Rain of Knives, and would be a notable DPS drop without the insane drop off we have on Xygoz/Talendor atm. 4. Firebound Orb was an amazing spell in EoK, and it could use an update. I'd be cool with just a new spell with higher base damage, but mechanical changes would work too. As of EoK, SPA 413 (used for focus AAs) couldn't focus spells cast by items; if that's changed, a Focus AA line for it (which did exist in EoK beta) would be cool. An AA version of this (that could be summoned during the GCD) would be cool, or additional counters added to the spell one. Those are just wish list items though, the main thing I want is some way to bring it up to RoS+1 standards. 5. It's been a while since we've gotten anything utility related. That's fine, since the class is in a good spot and we do have a decent amount of tools. There are some things like leap-type AAs and personal evacs that a lot of classes now have that make less sense lore-wise than for Mages. This is dependent on how the devs feel, but if an air elemental could swoop in and carry me to safety that'd be legit.
In the more bain-stormy section: I was looking at the Summon (disobedient) Servant/Minion click swarm pets, and I like the basic idea: summon stuff to summon pets. Very mage. The problem I have with them is that there are too few charges. Any item with chargea will feel as “too few”, I guess, but with only one charge, I forget that I have them, never mind analyzing if they are worth it. It is also part of the allure, to get something to click during GCD. I would really love to get the epic pet back, somehow, getting it updated with each expansion. I missed out the last time, only enjoying it for a relatively short time, before a new expansion made it obsolete. Completely selfish thought: I would like swarm pets to proc a small ae rune... that way they would be more popular in raids I would suggest to comsoder an AA line that gives our DD bonus damage versus Elemental/Summoned mobs, imstead of the seperate anti summoned nuke that I always forget that I have. If some complexity is needed, make it On/off, with On giving 30% damage bonus to Summoned/Elementsl, but 30% penalty against all other. (Should be toggleable from hotbutton).
I’d still like to see some drastic improvements to our magic based damage spells. On fire immune stuff (of which there’s a fair amount in RoS), the dps drop off is comically large.
Is there a reason why our magic spells have such a large DPS penalty? This is a big problem with mages. Our magic nukes are a huge DPS loss. Unless I cannot use my fire nukes, my magic lineup is never used. And the variety of the types of nukes we use are very limited. Other caster classes have a much larger choice of spells to use. We've always been very limited. I won't go to a zone, such as SF (ROS) because of the fire resistant mobs unless I have to. It would be a great zone if we had a bigger variety of spells to use. Since we'll always be second class casters when it comes to CC and pull splitting. I would think it would be fair if we as mages had a bigger variety of nukes ,or at least make magic nukes usable. If the mobs are fire resistant you basically take mages out of the ballgame. Our DPS loss is a huge problem.
On a more serious note.... 1. Magic based Volley spell 2. Improve magic DD spells *ONLY* if fire damage remains the same. I do not want to improve magic and sacrifice fire. 3. Air pet seems irrelevant. If you need a tank, use earth. DPS use water. On a raid if both water pets die then fire. Air needs some boosts or changes to at least make it situationally relevant. 4. Upgrade to Cauldron. Magicians are the masters of summoning stuff, we should be able to summon nice utility things like food, drink, invis/ITU, cure potions that can be used in today's game. 5. Unlink all Heart of xyz lines 6. If no to #5, then revisit all Heart of lines that do not end in Flames. Outside of an occsional Heart of Stone, I know of no magicians that use Vapor and Ice. Boosts are needed to those two at minimum to make people want to use them. 7. Make Dicho cast time 0.1 seconds instead of the current 0.5 seconds 8. Slightly increase Reluctant Benefaction (or whatever it is called) heal amount. Greatly increase duration of buff, maybe to 48 minutes to match Bodyguard. 9. Make 1h/shield combos provide equal DPS to 2hb so that casters can choose what they want. Instead of every magician running around with 2hb. 10. Increase damage amount of Threads of Potential so that during burns it becomes an improvement over wearing the older expansion belt w/Force of Corruption More as I think of them later...
Couple things that I would like to see changed. 1. Combine our DS and skyfire veil line of spells. (does normal DS damage and has a chance to proc) 2. Change the summon insurgent servant clicky to add a buff that has a chance to summon the pet on a dd cast. like Sympathetic Minion effect from dreadstone summoners orb.
Well I guess what I would really like to see changed is the pets. If we look at the class description we see. Elements pets are at the heart of a magician's offensive strategy, and typically accompany a magician in all his adventures. This pet provides protection for its master, along with powerful attacks and special abilities. Magicians have a large selection of fire- and magic-based damage spells, allowing them to mount a damaging magical assault in support of their elemental pet. Most of what I want changed would be the pets. They are currently not that great and do not have powerful attacks and special abilities. I think they should be something like this. Earth- Tank pet with good physical damage. Casts a long duration snare every 3 seconds. Water- Would like to see as cold wizard pet. Casts high damage single target cold nuke every 3 seconds. Fire- change the single target dd to a medium damage beam spell. Air- change to magic wiz pet. Casts high damage single target magic dd spell every 3 seconds. So now the pets would be more situational and could be balanced properly. Would also like to see chaotic munificence spell turned into a ground spawn spell like the rune of healing item. It would be nice if it could heal pets for like 8k every 3 seconds for 30 seconds or something like that. No idea on the values. would also be nice to swap that spell with burning symbiosis or something with the thaumaturge unity aa.
As a non-mage, one simple QOL fix would be having to turn pet taunt on after each time you joined a group or raid if you wanted it on. So if it's on, it's on on purpose. (it's very useful at times - but don't make people have to remember to turn it off)
my pov semi eok raid with conflag raid em25 ear. 10% maybe more with earth only when I need it. Works as its needed. Air pet is casual.. maybe if I forget I use it.. not often at all. Water has become the everyday eddie for me.. 80% of the time this is pet I use.. Fire well I don't use it.. ever.. like ever ever. QoL on taunt is joke.. just be a F mage and turn it off if its not needed. No need waste a deves time on this.. Find something or anything for a firepet to be summoned.. I could not care if that bastard out and make nuke a single DD. that would use mana and eat a few trigger for alliance.. nothing OP.. but math base it at 3 mages with 3 fire pets.. get a trigger.. handi the pet and reward the handi with a control trigger if that's what is needed for balance. I want more mana reg options..
Fire pet nukes helping on Alliance would be real nice He nukes every 4 seconds, so his 3(maybe 4) hits inside Alliance duration would make it almost usable for 2 magicians. Like, 2 good mages would probably get it most of the time. 2 slackers pretty surely wouldn't. That seems exactly right for non-raid setting. edit: since I'm posting? 100% with Sancus on Dicho. Best left as is and proceed right on past edit again: things worth fixing? Convergence ornamentation. I'm partial to orbs-on-a-stick Radiant Orb of the Arch Magus, Dreadstone Summoner's Orb, epics1&2. Could be anything, though.
Let's be honest here. There are a lot of pointless or useless suggestions in this post but the number 1 priority is a need for an improvement of magic based damage. We need a new spell to even have a proper spell rotation of magic spells. Something I have been annoyed with and also should go along with the class is our summoned based damage spells and AA. They are low cost and seldom resisted but low damage. A few expansions back they changed how the spells work. They used to have a chance to destroy the mob now it's just a 24% chance apply debuff or a 12% chance of a 120k nuke. I personally feel it should work similar to headshot, assassinate, etc and have a chance at significant damage considering it's only a small number of months per expansion that it even works on and we are a premier summoning class. On that note, I don't really know why druids get the spell line so perhaps apply changes to Turn Summoned AA which is practically useless. A weak non focused and short duration dot that just draws tons of aggro, has a 5min recast and works on even fewer mobs (Repudiate Unnatural works on constructs but Turn Summoned does not). Maybe a 10% chance to do actually noticable damage. In terms of pets, if I'm pet tanking the only time Earth pet is used is on current expansion named otherwise it's always Air pet. More damage, better aggro, stuns and almost as high hp/ac. If not tanking or I'm raiding then it's always Water pet except Fire for ST2 bone piles. I see no reason that Fire pets should still be rooted in place but they need their spell damage significantly boosted. If they remain rooted then it needs to be boosted even more for them to have any viability. For the DS spells, an upgrade to Surge would be nice and occasionally used but the other short duration DS spells could disappear and I doubt anyone would miss them. I don't think I have ever cast them since their inception except to see what they did at that time. Sorry for any misspelling or grammar, typing on phone.
I 100% agree with what is in bold. Our lack of diversity in spells has always been a problem with the mage. Fire spells are great till we meet fire resistant mobs. Then what? Our magic based spells really are not up to par, they never really were. The only good thing about a magic attack it seems much more mana efficient. But the DPS trade-off just isn't worth it. The other thing DEV's should look at is where do mages stand in the DPS game? (I'm sure there's mountains of data to look at so it most likely won't be addressed) But the mage is a DPS class. We need to do good DPS to be a viable team member. Our DPS comes from spell casting and our pets, if one is taken away we're hurting. In the history of EQ, we've had a lot of situations where our DPS is destroyed. You have to look at the data from solo/molo, group to raid. How do we stack up compared to other classes in the same situation? When we have support where does our DPS stand? With no support , how do we stack? You have look at data from numerous mages ,not just one uber mage or from a low end mage with basic equipment and does little to no DPS.
In terms of priority, I'd guess it is: 1. Magic damage. 2. Fire pets. 3. Damage shields. Fire pets are easy to fix. Just make them do area of effect damage. Thus the roles will be: Earth pet - hard tank Air pet - medium tank + damage Water pet - single target damage Fire pet - area of effect damage Damage shields are also easy to fix. Just give upgrade. Adding an unique rotation for magic spells is, however, a lot of work. You could just copy the fire line, but that would be boring.
Agree with Bexar and Gnomeland. 1. Fix the pets and abilities on them. 2. Magic damage for sure. Even with steel vengeance aa it is blah. 3. Lets be honest. We are mages and not wizards. Magic damage could use a little bit of a boost but we are supposed to do damage in support of our pets. Not nuke like wizards. So ya, boost and change the pets.
Here's a more complete list of class improvements, copied from PMs. I've talked to a handful of Mages about our AAs and some of these ideas I've picked up from those conversations. Piemastaj deserves a lot of credit for mentioning these or similar ideas (I did try to be original but...). All that having been said: AAs: Updated: Elemental Forms: I think these are among the more unique mage AAs that unfortunately don’t really encourage meaningful decision making given how weak they are. The elemental design of our class encourages choice, and I think these should reflect that better. Air: The 110 cap on Elemental Air makes it very rarely useful. It should be a 113 cap like our Air pet stun, and perhaps proc a small heal for the mob’s target or an avoidance buff (keeping with air). Earth: I feel like the concept behind this ability is good, but 5500 damage is pretty low. Perhaps an effect like Chaotic Munificence could be added to the proc. Fire: The biggest issue with Elemental Flames is that it has so many stacking issues – Heart of Flames, Flames of Power, Improved Familiar, and Bard Aria all don’t stack. I think at a minimum it needs to be changed to SPA 507 (which is comparable to 124 but has fewer conflicts). Beyond that, the focus % should be increased, or it should get swapped to an SPA (my vote would be 413) that is more multiplicative (although with a lower focus %). Water: I’m not sure if the devs want to encourage casters to melee, but given Water pets are our Rogue pets, it seems fitting to add something in here on top of the mana regen. I think a relatively large melee DD proc (like 15k-20k base, self only is fine) would add flavor to the class. It adds an additional risk, but increases the reward from meleeing as well. In my head I think it would be ideal if Water was stronger on shorter fights where crit chance/damagae are high, and then slopes off on longer fights where crit chance/damage drop. Heart of Vapor: Heart of Vapor never gets used. The critical damage modifier is too low to ever be better. It also has had stacking issues historically, and as far as I can tell it still should have stacking issues with IoG/FE, but sometimes it doesn’t. If the critical damage modifier got high enough, Heart of Vapor would be more burst oriented while Heart of Flames would be more sustained oriented. Having them on different timers would also encourage its use (although it wouldn’t encourage as much choice). Host of the Elements: This AA is really good in RoS, I’d really like to see it continue to get upgraded to retain relevance. Our AA swarm pets often get neglected and fade out of use. Servant of Ro: The AA description for this is wrong. It says it does damage every 3s, but there are often 8+ second gaps in between its nukes. This makes it do about half as much damage as the description suggests it will, and about half as much damage as it should IMO (790k is a good target, vs 400-450k). Shield of Elements: Given this is the only damage rune we get and it’s on a 15-minute timer, it seems reasonable that it would absorb more than 75k damage. I think 125k (about half my max health) would be a good target. Steel Vengeance: If we aren't seeing additional Magic spell upgrades, I think this should be made to proc off of all of our Magic spells. Theft of Essence: First, I’d like to see the stats on this updated across the board. Secondly, I think it should include a Hit Damage Modifier of at least 15%, but 20% would be a nice bump. That wouldn’t stack with our aura (Arcane Distillect, which is 15%), but it would allow the boost to be centered on our pet instead of us (which is useful in certain situations depending on where we have to stand). Thirdly, I’d really love if it mitigated AE damage some. Mages don’t have to stand in melee range and we’re given Shield of Order (60% mitigation of any AE > 15000 damage, up to 233k damage). Our pets stand in melee range, in the case of our swarm pets can’t be healed, and often can’t be intelligently moved to avoid mechanics given raid lag, poor pathing, etc. If the absorption needs a damage cap, it could apply a second buff that is just a spell rune. Hastened Raging Servant: I’d really like an additional second on this. In normal scenarios it would give no difference, but when raids lag, Volley ends up refreshing slightly faster than RS. Having them refresh at the same time (and as such allowing RS to fire first in a multiband without manual intervention) would be a good QoL change. New: Focus: Blazing Jet: If there is no upgrade to Firebound Orb, I’d really like a Focus line for it. If SPA 413 still can’t focus spells cast by items, I'd like it to use 461 or 302 or something like that. Frenzied Swarm: This would be a short duration, Circle of Power-like haste and hit damage aura for swarm pets. It would need to not use an aura slot (just like CoP). If this gets added and is allowed to be staggered, I think it should be raid based instead of group based. Being forced to put as many Mages as possible in one group would be detrimental to a lot of the cool synergies that EoK added. Elemental Rescue: This would be a self evac, based on the premise that an Air Elemental could essentially swoop in and carry you to safety. Gust of Air: This would be a shadowstep ability. I don’t mind if this is on a relatively long cooldown (like 1 minute or w/e), but we have very poor mobility, something that’s increasingly demanded in raids. Lore wise, I again think it makes a lot of sense to benefit from certain properties of an Air elemental. Spells: Bug Fixes: Chaotic Inferno: The chance to proc Chaotic Inferno Refreshment decreases as you increase in rank (it's 35%/32%/30% respectively). The chance to proc Chaotic Inferno Jolt should be reduced, or the mana return value needs to get larger as rank increases to make up for the reduction in proc chance. It doesn't make sense for that part to get worse with higher ranks. Modifications: Chaotic Inferno: Flames of Power should be changed to SPA 507. That SPA functions extremely similarly to SPA 124, it just would stack with Heart of Flames. Please change Flames of Weakness to 507 too, as that would stop it from blocking Heart of Flames. Pet Differentiation: I worry about adding increased main pet DPS simply because of how much they lag on raids. That said, I do agree with the sentiment that some pets are underutilized (Fire, Air), and differentiating them more in a way that makes them more viable would be good. New Spells: The biggest area mages are hurting in is with Magic spells. We end up doing ~1/3 of our fire damage, and we lose many of the class's interesting mechanics. These are magic versions of two of our fire spells to help address that. I chose 90% of the fire spell's base damage, which seems reasonable given we still lose out on Synergy, various debuffs, Firebound Orb, and still wouldn't have a fire Spear. That said, the devs can certainly decrease the base damage more if they so choose. First, a Magic version of Volley of Many (Chromatic would also be fine). This should be focused by Volley's focus AAs and be able to proc Theft of Essence: Shock of Many Rk. III Classes: MAG/107 Skill: Conjuration Mana: 2234 Target: Line of Sight Range: 300' Resist: Magic Reflectable: Yes Trigger Spell DS: Yes Focusable: Yes Casting: 0.75s, Recast: 9s, Timer: 6, Rest: 1.5s 1: Decrease Current HP by 4476 (If Between 1 To 2 Pets On Hatelist) 2: Decrease Current HP by 9646 (If Between 3 To 5 Pets On Hatelist) 3: Decrease Current HP by 16263 (If Between 6 To 9 Pets On Hatelist) 4: Decrease Current HP by 26623 (If Between 10 To 14 Pets On Hatelist) 5: Decrease Current HP by 41985 (If More Than 14 Pets On Hatelist) Second, a Magic version of Chaotic Inferno, with slightly less base damage. Since Flames of Power focuses all spells the recourse doesn't need to be changed. That said, if the devs wanted to change the procs up a bit, I think a unique effect would use SPA 501. Chaotic Shock Rk. III Classes: MAG/110 Skill: Conjuration Mana: 3152 Target: Single Range: 200' Resist: Magic -20 Reflectable: Yes Trigger Spell DS: Yes Focusable: Yes Casting: 1.5s, Recast: 5.25s, Timer: 4, Rest: 1.5s 1: Decrease Current HP by 23462 2: Cast: Chaotic Shock Chance III Another spell I'd really love to see is a Firebound Orb upgrade for RoS standards. If new focus AAs are being added next expansion, Blazing Jet should either also receive Focus AAs or get those rolled into its base damage too so it retains its relative value. If not, this would be sufficient: Burning Jet III Classes: MAG/107 Skill: Evocation Mana: 10 Target: Single Range: 200' Resist: Fire -75 Reflectable: Yes Trigger Spell DS: Yes Focusable: Yes Casting: 0s, Recast: 6s, Rest: 1.5s 1: Decrease Current HP by 34810
Pretty minor but also to add: aren’t we about due for a new cauldron? Most of the stuff the current one summons is pretty underwhelming. A new cauldron summoning things like: -updated weapon pair (should be better than the standard summon ones) -new rageblades with a hefty-ish aggro proc -updated stat food/drink -worlu’s with a few more charges -doors with a few more charges -updated ice nuke clicky -updated self only rod -single charge damage shield potion Would be nice. Removing the augs and pet focus item as choices would be cool too. Would rather have the sulfur. Another QoL idea that’s been mentioned but skipped your list - what about a Pet Unity AA? Having the ability to press a single button with a mana cost penalty and relatively long reuse to buff/equip pet would be extremely nice. Seems like Mages are one of, if not the most, annoying class to die as.
Yeah, I agree with this. A Pet Unity AA would be a very nice QoL change. I probably should've better emphasize that while that list is "more complete," it definitely isn't completely complete (or even close). There are a few other things that should probably get added to the list that I neglected to include: Heart of Ice/Stone: It doesn't really make sense that these last 6 minutes, have a 15 minute recast, and only have a 80k damage cap. That's far worse than Shield of Order that we can use on demand, and if you actually take damage these get stripped in a few seconds. Increasing the damage cap would be the easiest fix. I'd also be cool with Heart of Ice mitigating DoT damage, since we already have Shield of Order for DD's. Altering their functionality to make them more relevant in a different way would work too. Summon Companion: This shouldn't be level capped, or at the very least the summon and some amount of aggro reduction should occur if the mob is >113. This was one of our main tools to deal with all the pathing and positioning woes of pets in EQ, and we also don't really have any way to actively manage pet aggro (unlike players who have a myriad of de-aggro abilities). AFAIK the fade nerfs were targetted at pulling, but in the vast majority of situations this isn't a pulling tool. Boon of Many: (/wave Iblis!) This was originally mentioned here. The basic idea is a watered down, proc version of Volley of Many. This could either be added to something we already have, or be a new AA, and it could either be short duration of long duration. Volley is one of our most unique spells, and this just further leverages that mechanic. Frenzied Swarm: I mentioned this idea in the previous post, but I also wanted to mention it should use normal haste (SPA 11). That would prevent stacking issues with Aura of Begalru. Pet Gear Adjustment: This is a small thing, but Cloak of Enhancement should come with at least enough H Dex to reach the old cap for Accuracy/Combat Effects. Its such an easy cap to reach by giving your pet additional gear, but I feel like that shouldn't be necessary for such basic things. Just ~20 extra H Dex would accomplish that for Mage pets, although it'd need 32 more H Dex (37 total) for other class's pets. As for a Cauldron spell... it would be nice, but we don't get very many spells each expansion, and just getting a working Magic rotation takes up like 2+ of them. If cauldron got turned into an AA, though, that would be kinda cool. I agree wrt most of the stuff you mentioned for it. Anything with charges that comes some of it really needs to disappear if they share a lore group (e.g. an ice clicky with our normal ice clicky); I think Ngreth mentioned somewhere they'd like to change that.
