[Pet classes] Magus / Engi (WL/SH)

[ChicagoJoe]

Bumping so Bitterstone can find.

[medvtank1]

Really think these classes need to be looked at.

SW/SH at least have melee they can turn to if opponents get close (SH also somehow has insane aoe dps in melee tank form)
BW/Sorc do insane dmg.

Magus are basically pots.
Armor ability that gives you 560 armor. 100 less than an armor pot that everyone uses. And our ability can be shattered.
Acid puddle(11pt ability) that does almost equal dmg to blasting pots.
Corp party buff that is less that the 3 resistance buff shammys or chosens give. Magus- 220 Corp only..... Sham- 250 Corp/Ele/Spirit....Chosen 321 again all 3.
Seems strange that these even exist.

Give Magus/Engi a group buff that is actually useful or on par with the resist buff from chosen/shaman.

[martholomew]

I've actually given up and quit playing. Didn't want to, and Magus is super fun to play, but none of that matters when you get treated like trash for not wanting to be a Rift bot. Sure I did amazing single target damage and could snipe and erase someone in range, but if they're getting healed, you're F'd. I keep checking back to see if any changes get made, but since Magus isn't a Marauder or Shadow Warrior, they don't get any love or attention.

[Szeff]

I think people put themselves in this box of thinking when it comes to engineer/magus that the pet buffs are what make the class and to fix the class the pets have to be buffed to withstand the AoE damage we are seeing, and exemplified in city.

But the stationary summons these classes had were originally just flavor tbh. There was no buff provided, the damage was mostly inconsequential and players just used them for an ele/armor debuff basically, and a vessel for their AoE KD.

When the CC apocalypse happened, magus and engineer were absolutely crushed as a class. They relied more on their CC than any other class to be effective and now with immunities they got hit REAL HARD. It wasn't until the game went down the drain and we got a balance pass these classes got their damage buff by standing next to their summons. Just a part of the incredibly lazy game design choices that were thrown out at the end of the games lifespan like we saw with WE getting ranged finishers etc...

Then on this server we saw a real attempt to make the whole stand close to your summon mechanic actually interesting, and honestly it succeeded mostly at least in terms of making the mechanics interesting.

The damage buff needs to go. If the devs here can go though every single marauder ability and redo all the coefficients then the same treatment can be done for magus/engineer. Go through every ability and bring them up to par (go through the pet abilities too some are just sad), and remove the damage buff from the pets. Too much of this classes power is coming from them, its BAD design plain and simple.

Keep the utility on them, I like the range, the mobile dot play, and the tank/AoE radius aspects all the pets provide. Give each pet different stats based on what they are used for. The ranged summon should be squishy, the medium and close range should be a lot more tanky considering their application. Give some AoE reduction. And finally increase the cooldown on these pets, so there is actual risk/reward going on and people are encouraged to actually target them if they want.

THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Until the devs STOP tying literally 40% of the classes damage to a pet that dies in 2 hits (that's being generous), then the class will continue as a whole to be subpar to other DPS. Sorc/BW SHOULD be doing more damage at ranged that is fine as Magus has so much utility. However, tying that damage to these pets is the dumbest mechanic when they have designed the pets to die to a sneeze AND drop your stacks immediately down to half on pet death.

For those who don't know: spending 1-2 GCDs on a pet can lower the dmg and range of a Magus/Engineer by immediately 20% and quickly 40% after that if they don't immediately re-summon.

1) Keep the stacking buffs but make it not destroy the class without them, the "flavor buffs" add enough to make the pets always be worth casting

2) If you keep the dmg stacks, make it lower like in live so that the dmg builds faster and also shrinks faster without the pet.

3) Make the pets more resistant to AOE so people have to actually target them to remove them. Right now an AoE DoT on someone near me will be enough to kill my daemon in under 3 seconds. Toughness/wounds pet tactic does nothing to help this.

If you remove this ridiculous balancing metric and tie the damage back into the skills, you can ACTUALLY start to look at real balance with them.

[xanderous]

I think an easy fix would be to just give the pets reduced damage on aoe, that should resolve 90% of the issue, a more complicated fix would be to provide both classes with a loner tactic like the MSH and WL, whom have pretty much come to terms that pets are useless in big numbers RVR and will only use the loner tactic when it comes to facing a lot of aoe being flung around. Though engie and magus would need a complete rework if they got this tactic to balance out how stacks work, possibly even make them perform more like MDPS by reducing their range and giving them stat conversions similar to ASW/MSH on their loner tactic. Though again much easier fix to just nerf the aoe damage on the pet, just like the WL has, also give it to the SH pet too as well, no reason why it does not have it either.

[nik89]

I want to give this a bump.

I think magus/engi need some love/a balance patch.

Allowing pet to ignore/mitigate most aoes would be a good change.
In a blob fight they have to pay attention to both their own health and position and that of their pets.

That's just not a good design. The demerits from being away from your pet are too high for the current class direction.

Like BW/sorc, for max aoe dmg they need to come in close to a blob. Engi/magus need to use their cone, and aoe filler/lightning rod for the real big numbers.

As an aside, engi needs to stand still a lot more than magus because it is reliant on PS for it's main/largest aoe dmg. That's a stationary channel skill (which a lot of rdps aoe classes have), which accounts for a lot of your dmg(which is not as standard). It's on a 16s cd with a 6s duration. if you use the full cast you are standing still for a long time.
Ideally in 10s you do it again.
magus shares a lot of problems with engi, but magus is not as reliant on channeling for big numbers. magus use mist, dots, and then aoe tentacle filler. They can spec channel for a funnel to replace tentacle.


A separate concern:
They can do a lot* of dmg in a funnel, but with nerfs to the pet buff, they are more on par with other (good) rdps aoe specs in a funnel like bw/sorc.

That's kind of silly thing to happen since they are meant (current skill theme) to be the strongest funnel class. They are great in funnels, but not the undisputed kings anymore.

I am not arguing for them to be op in funnels, but they don't really have an alternative identity right now.
They are in a weird place.

One other quick thing about pets:
Fights are fast paced and stacks take a long time to tier up. This is fine in funnels, but makes playing in orvr especially punishing. losing your pet is a big problem. The turret deploy tactic is basically required anywhere other than a funnel. A fight can be over before you hit full stacks(if you can even afford to stand still next to it!).

It's a tough thing to balance since engi and magus are so popular. Any buff would run the risk of having a detrimental effect on the server.
It's not like magus/engi are unable to do big dmg. It just comes with more headache/consideration than other classes, and in far less situations.

dmg buffs are hard to justify, but I think QoL changes are reasonable. At the very least, fixing the survivability to pets would be a welcome change.