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

i think our only hope is that because some of the pet aas are summoning hundreds of pets on the test server there has to be another update before it goes live hopefully they see this thread before they do that.

Just bumping this thread. I have nothing to say that hasn't been said better by smarter people. That being said, the nerf bat is a little overboard with this one.

Hopefully this thread draws enough activity someone pays attention.

I can understand the change in pet count, makes sense. But cutting the DPS makes NO sense at all. My parses show a decent balance to rangers n rogues (not when they headshot of course), a bit higher than monks and wizards in group, equal or less in raid., and much lower than necros in group and raid. So we're getting the stick why? It's not like we're out of tune.

In line with what? Mages in SoF era topping parses pre-change certainly wasn't "in line" and a mage no longer do so is certainly not "burning down a class to the ground". Let's not act like mage pets don't still get their steroids in SoF.

I'm amazed how salty some people are that mages had a brief time in the limelight after being at the bottom of the barrel for over a year.

These are all other DPS relishing the fact that we might get nerfed in an expansion where we would otherwise threaten their rank.

I mean I main a rogue and still feel bad for mages, plus I want more casters in our raids and this won't do anything to help.

My thoughts from the mage discord:

Current shock 3 is a cumulative 19,208, jolt 3 is 24,025, and clash 3 is 52,414, so the proposed numbers in this thread are ~59%, ~59%, and a staggering 37%, which is honestly beyond modest. I would campaign for more than this if you're going to, or ask to take the new swarm changes but to leave shock-clash unchanged. It is obviously a side effect of trying to cut down swarm pets on live, so it shouldn't matter if the lower level "of many" spells remain unchanged. There's no way they realize how large of a nerf this is to Sof-TBM, with the current test numbers, shock 3 and jolt 3 are down to ~26% of what they were, and clash 3 is down to ~24% of what it was (not to mention minor adps benefits of multiple tiers). People can make the point the spell was not implemented as intended, but it was honestly not grossly broken in terms of raid dps, the most broken aspect was definitely the ease by which that dps could be obtained.

To this end, keeping the old Shock, Jolt, and Clash spells with the new swarm pet changes would raise the bar to obtain the maximum ranks without nerfing the class into the ground, and personally seems like the easiest solution.

Overall good changes.

Anything to reduce raid lag is huge

For the SoF mage, you are getting your buggy spell fixed. Deal with it. Mages were absolutely crushing using that spell, like 2x dmg. It'll bring them more in line.

Karmana, not sure which guild you are in, but mages are very competitive in TBM and going forward all the way to live. If anything this is a buff in these later xpacs where currently your pet does nothing due to lag. If they fix that, enjoy your dps increase.

This thread isn't about live and it has ZERO to do with swarm pet changes.

Mages haven't been competitive for a long time on mischief. And, way back when they had some decent damage, aggro was limiting. Every mage that has been playing this TLP and every TLP to come has and will be salivating, waiting for these expansions. Thanks for the outsider perspective advice to "deal with it" and all, but nah I'm good.

By the way, TBM releases in 2025. You think I'm gonna just hang around for a bit longer after already just being promised to just hang on a little longer.

bring them more in line? like to the bottom of the parse below previous expansion melee? mages have been at the bottom of the parse for years now they have to wait until EoK (2 years) to be competitive? If i were a main mage on mischief or aradune id probably switch class, move to oakwynd, or play a different game.

If by "bring them more in line" you mean move them back down to garbage tier then yes, this will100% do that.

At least rogues only have to wait 4-6 months to get good. Mages have to wait... *checks notes* Just under 4 years. Most TLP guilds won't even have any mages left by the time they don't suck. Mages need a DPS boost. They are one of my favorite classes but I just can't take working twice as hard as everyone else and doing half the dps. They can fix the buggy spell AND boost the dmg to a more reasonable level. That would be true "bringing them in line"

The issue is the spell was already fixed in another 4 expansions at level 92. The stacking was corrected but the highest tier of damage was increased to basically 2.6X the damage of next biggest nuke going forward with the line. This new update doesn't take that future fix into account and just nerfs the stacking, making the nuke drop to slightly below our other biggest nuke. This basically makes the spell worthless and something that wont be useful for another 4 expansions. So yes mages in the future are awesome, but the spell was also balanced to be much higher damage without the stacking

On the positive side, you can roll necro or monk or whatever to "top the charts" and then switch back to mage around HoT when their pet tanks better then raid geared tanks.

Mages are easy to gear up and don't require a whole ton.

Go play something else for a year isn't a great retention tool.

This change to number of swarm pets isnt even supposed to be a nerf, its purely a change to help reduce lag on live servers. The trickle down effect being applied to all lower level versions of the Of Many spell line is just poor execution of something that is supposed to be a positive change.

A very very simple solution would be to only adjust the Of Many spell line back to EoK so that it is not a nerf to anyone. Sure it would be harder to hit the max pet threshold damage tier for those earlier era versions of the spell because of the number of swarm pets being adjusted, but thats just means the Of Many spell will less often be reaching those lofty heights and not be as needed to be nerfed.

An alternative option would be to adjust the damage tiers of each version of the Of Many spell so as to keep mages competitive with the total dps that other classes are dishing out at those times. This would require a lot more effort to do well, but its still better than just completely gutting a classes DPS on the TLP servers.

The bottom line, as it currently stands, there is no reason for anyone on Oakwynd, or future TLPs to play a mage, and in fact they would be hindering any guild they joined by playing one instead of one of the several other dps options.

People on Yelinak playing mages should also strongly consider class changing right now.

Players on Mischief/Thornblade and Aradune/Rizlona, well you invested a ton of time into your mages by now, you suffered through MoTM from classic through PoP which directly ruins the fun of raiding on a mage. You suffered through the god awful resists of the way too long level 70 era and are one of the very very few casters who didnt quit and/or class change. Your reward is to go back to being just as insignificant to any raid as you were in OOW or quit.

Mangler and older TLPs, thank god you are at EoK or close to it.

This may be fixing a bug but the issue is mages needed that bug to be able to compete with the other dps, all of whom, except for wizards, have significant out of era dps boosts. If you are going to 'fix' mages why are you not tying the TDS era melee dps AAs to the appropriate era, fixing the bug with jonathan's and tying bellow to the correct era so bards don't out dps actual dps classes. Possibly nerfing the revamped DoTs too, but that's harder to do since the spell data is shared with live.

Either do a proper balancing pass or leave it as it was, don't nerf one of the few eras a caster is actually decent to play. Anyone who's played on a TLP past PoP knows how melee are generally so much stronger and tend to outnumber casters heavily.

I think the most fun way to improve casters for these levels (besides fixing resists) is to move enchanter and druid caster adps to oow. monks will still do more than casters even with IoG rolling. Would probably completely break necros from 75-95 tho.

Even the downtime was quick, lol! They just couldn't wait to ruin mages.

Yeah, I am curious about just how bad we are going to be now.

If it is as bad as it's been I just can't....