Magus Rework

[buerdig]

Since DPS rework is next on the list, I was hoping to address the state of Magus in the current waaaagghhh. I main magus because it's such a fun class due to it's flexibility and bag of tricks that you have at your disposal. One of the main issues with magus however is it tends to suffer from having every trick in the book but not being the master of any of them.

One of the biggest things is that magus doesn't really provide anything to the group other than AP tactic but in most WBs that is covered by someone else. Rift used to be the big contribution we brought, however when up against a choppa or a mara, the extra DPS, debuffs they provide negate bringing a magus. I'm still a believer that rift is just too unpredictable with the LoS, and where it sometimes positions the pull. Regardless, most WBs again would rather bring a mara, choppa to fill that role.

Do I think magus do bad damage? No, we get the bad rap of doing fluff and no stuff, but I do believe magus is great at setting up others to shine. We harass, annoy, disrupt. However, with the healer revamp I've noticed that our main gifts with AoE dots, punish us because instead of making a backline move from our AoE's, I've watched people just stand in it cause it's a great morale builder for the enemy that is easy to heal through. In Orvr, the DoTs are just wiped away or just out healed so fast that it doesn't really feel like I'm making the healers job any more difficult when other destro dps can apply pressure faster.

A big thing I wish I got a chance to experience was the unique buffs to each of the magus pets instead of the standard 20% dmg they all share. Yes, the pink horror has the extra debuff, but our whole schtick is being able to summon these horrors; that are underwhelming. If the 20% dmg could be shared among group members who are near it or bring back the system of having each pet do something unique for each type of mastery path taken, it would be more fun and make us provide something to groups. Especially for demonology, we only really have one tactic (AP) that benefits anyone besides ourselves. I don't feel like my daemons get any more powerful regardless of how far into each tree I go. Plus, the constant summoning which resets our dmg buff, regardless of using the teleportation skill should at least let us retain the stacks if don't take the instant summon tactic.

I'm just hoping Magus can bring more value other than wang disc slaps.

[Sinisterror]

RoR.builders - Magus Magus gets ap from lasting chaos and its basically endess Ap. Magus has great single target dmg as you can see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OIXBpX ... fA&index=4 And great CC as well. Pink Horror Does 378 Elemental Resis debuff and the 10+ abilities you use in this build all do elemental dmg.

Magus is very good. Magus/Engi Should get the old actually powerful rift/magnet they used to get which pulled people from wc's,keep and fortress walls. Nobody brought choppa for the pull when magi/engi pull worked like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5Zw4FUPacc

[buerdig]

RoR.builders - Magus Magus gets ap from lasting chaos and its basically endess Ap. Magus has great single target dmg as you can see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OIXBpX ... fA&index=4 And great CC as well. Pink Horror Does 378 Elemental Resis debuff and the 10+ abilities you use in this build all do elemental dmg.

Magus is very good. Magus/Engi Should get the old actually powerful rift/magnet they used to get which pulled people from wc's,keep and fortress walls. Nobody brought choppa for the pull when magi/engi pull worked like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5Zw4FUPacc

I started playing sadly right before the rift change so that is pretty crazy to see it working like that. No question in solo, magus is very self-sufficient and being able to cast most things on the move is one of my favorite things. I mean all dps is the last for the rework, so I guess I'm curious to see how magus is going to play into that.

[Mishas]

Magus rework I bet is going to be one of the trickiest.
I will give my opinion about Magus current state:

It is a class with a wide toolset at its dispossal. However, this toolset gets badly hurt the more people you cooperate with. We could summarize it as "There is always someone that does it better". This leads us to think about what is that special thing that Maguses bring to the table... nothing really.
On paper, Magus has a very nice toolset but in reality, nothing in that toolset gets him a WB spot over any other dps. Do not get me wrong, as a solo class, Magus is VERY fun to play but for playing in a group... +15% damage and unlimited AP tactics are nice things but just not enough (for PvP at least).

To keep this clean (trying to be useful here xD) I will try to enumerate the problems and possible solutions as I see them:

DPS wise, I think numbers are mostly OK. Some skills could have the numbers increased a bit but overall I think that Magus has a good ST dps + good ranged and melee AoE damage. So why if the numbers (or the dps potential) are fine I bring this up?

Problems that make the class underperform as a dps compared to others

• Magus dps needs to be built up. It requires several DoTs to be put on the target in combination with other DD abilities. This issue on its own seems fair but when compared to how other dps output their dps it is a big disadvantage. Melees usually hit harder by default + they have AAs. In group play, a melee rarely has problems to close the gap to a target in 1 or 2 GDCs which for Maguses is just not enough since for a decent dps they require to stack up between 3-5 DoTs.

• Pet mechanic of an static nature. In the previous point I have mentioned the disadvantage of a ranged vs a melee dps class. However, on Magus (and engineer ofc) this is aggravated by the fact that for taking advantage of our class mechanic we have to limit our own mobility AND spend GDCs into it. Summoning the pet, reposition the pet around, all weaknesses compared to what they bring to the table. The 20% dps increase makes Magus dps feel "normal" or "fair" in comparison to ther dps and yet the class suffers from it rather benefitting. Then pets, bring very little to the table. Pink pet is the only one that we could say its useful.

• Disrrupts. As a magic damage dealer, Maguses suffer a lot against this mechanic. As explained on the previous points, Maguses have to spend time and resources into positioning and for building their damage. When you add the absurd disrrupt rates that priority targets like healers can get by default it just makes everything feel so underwhelming. Speccing the gear into strikethrough makes it a little bit better but in exchange, Magus class losses a lot of dps.

• No heal debuff at all. Magus its not the only DPS without it but in other classes the heal debuff works a great deal when played in a group. SWs and SHs for example are a able to keep up in a group environment due to the heal debuff. The only access Magus has to a debuff is though a gear set which is not fair. 25% vs 50%, being a proc instead of a direct DoT and requiring 6 pieces of an inferior (compared to sov) gear set...

This are the main problems for Magus class as I see them. I tried to keep it short and summarize the idea instead of comparing 1on1 with other dps. In a general view, Magus as a DD just falls short in every aspect compared to other DDs.

What could be done about it?

Well, this is where it gets tricky. Magus is not a bad class at the moment, it just falls short. Balancing this without screwing things up big time is going to be difficult. Since I am trying to be helpful I will give a list of ideas. Doesn´t mean that I think Magus needs them all but maybe implementing some of them could make the class feel on par with other dps.

• Since the pet mechanic force them to summon and resummon constantly, I think that removing the resource dependency of such abilities would a very good change. No AP cost and no GCD for starters. I think the cast time for the summon its fair as long as we get a reposition for free every 20 seconds. The current tactic we have for it could be reworked into something else.

• Make each pet useful. Pink pet could use a heal debuff. Magus is one of the few dps that do no have access to one and it would be the perfect place for it. Flamer or the blue one could use an AoE snare... there are many possibilities, too many to mention but you get the idea.

• Make the pet +20% shareable in AoE. Giving Maguses the possibility of sharing the +20% damage/heals with their group could be that special something that would start making them interesting for group play. There are similar examples of this kind of mechanic already in game like the "Infernal gift" tactic from Socerers so I think it would not be that difficult to implement. The "Chaotic attunement" tactic could be a good candidate for this. Another way could be reworking the "Shocking jolt" ability into it.

• Allow pets to be summoned as a ranged ground target. It would be similar to how the nurgle mine is currently placed. This would give Maguses a bit more flexibility regarding their per mechanic.

• Make pandemonium an AoE 25-50% inc heal debuff. (This one could be OP although chosens already have an Aura for this so...). I think that AoE dots being able to be ignored or used to keep morales up is a problem. I think that this might not be the best way of solving that problem but just take it as an example of something that would make healers to at least try to dispell things instead of ignoring them

Anyway, I hope that at least this post helps to fire people´s imagination on how awesome Magus class could get to be if we matched what it brings to the table to how cool they look.

[Battlefield]

Why stagger duration reduced from 5 seconds to 3? By default in 1.4.8 patch it was 9 seconds !

[Rabenfeder]

I share the opinion of my predecessors; the Magus is a very interesting and beautiful class, and compared to my Sorceress, I actually do more damage with the same gear, as my AoE is much more flexible.
However, since that's only true for me, and in many cases the Sorceress does significantly more AoE damage due to her high crit chance, she's always preferred over the Magus.
Two key points I'd also like to see are free movement for pets, and please remove the nonsensical flying disc

[buerdig]

The disc should stay cause technically it's not a mount; it's a daemon the magus has made a pact with. Technically, the disc is a gift from Tzeentch for more power, but we end up being the puppet and are essentially playing the disc.

I would love the ability for the pet to move but I can see where it would be broken with the constant AP tactic, 20% dmg. Maybe a reworking for both magus and engi? The magus can have the pet following with a tactic but the longer it stays, it can maybe have a chance to attack us or maybe we suffer more disrupt, loss of intelligence, chance for our spells to backfire. Something that kinda reflects; having more control of our pet, we are becoming weaker in a sense for having to maintain that control for the 20% dmg increase and having it follows us. Most magus use bloodlord staff, so we already understand the nature of compromising dmg for defense. Maybe engi can in turn fire their own turrets like a siege weapon or something to kind of give a similar risk/reward.

I am nervous how that pet rework would bring a lot of issues though so I'm maybe a little less inclined to go straight to having following pets cause that's something Mythic coded. I was reading some old posts, and I think the biggest issue that everyone has written here is that we aren't bad, but it's been stated this game is not going into a direction for playing alone, Magus lack an appeal to bringing them over another dps. In organized WBs, the spots are limited, so that value has to be worth filling each spot.

Another idea is that if pets aren't going to go back to how they were before or being changed, making pets just summonable instantly and changing the instant summoning tactic where we lose the ability to summon a pet, but each pet becomes a spell buff for the group? That way, we provide something by losing our 20% dmg and because pets/turrets will be summonable instantly, so it still gives incentive of keeping our dmg high uptime always or losing dmg but providing more utility to others.

Examples:

• Pink horror becomes an ability that provides everyone in group 5-10% increase dmg for X time and actions can reduce crit % on target
  
  Blue horror can provide something like a pulsing aegis that deals dmg around everyone in your group and can reduce healing/silence for x duration to enemies within 5 ft
  
  Flamer can give rdps increased range and provide a fire enchant on weapons for x duration so that way both range and melee get something that is not normally provided.
  
  There is also a tactic we have called unearthly shriek but as far as I tested, it really only affects the pet which already has its own issues with targeting and having to spam its attacks manually just so they fire. Maybe have that include not just the pet but the magus and their group.