Zxul wrote:Ahh well. As somebody who had a t4 magus and loved it there, here are my 2 cents.
Biggest problem with magus is not magus- its the people which are trying to play a class with toughness tactic/armor buff/absorb tactic/self heal as a sorc.
On my t4 magus, going all out with armor talis/toughness, I had 3.9 k or so armor/800 sh toughness/orange resists/ full TB- more defense then quite a few dps tanks. In addition, I had a very nice racial absorb tactic, as well as 2.3 k or so heal on 1 min CD (Aegis of Orange Fire).
I would start from distance with all the instacast dots, then get close and finish targets with Havoc heavy nukes, cast with 50% cast time (because of Close Quarters tactic).
I regularly took on 2-3 order, including many times of higher lvls, and killed them just fine.
There is no problem with the class- problem is with people who try to play class with every possible tank mage tool as a glass cannon. I rerolled from t4 sorc to magus- and never regretted the decision.
You act like you were some sort of special case or had some special build. You didn't.
I had a RR95 Magus... and it is a terrible class. I've tried every single build possible, every gear set up, etc... Every playstyle possible.
That doesn't mean you can't do decently versus terrible opposition. Wow, you took on 2-3 bad orders! Great. I've taken out 5-7, easily, because they were low RRs who didn't know what they were doing. A high RR player who knows what they are doing can do that on any class, it has nothing specifically to do with the Magus.
Your argument is based completely on anecdotal evidence, which is why it isn't very valid. The old "well I did pretty good on my class so its balanced!" argument is one of the oldest in the book when it comes to class balance in MMOs. It's also one of the worst arguments as well.
A defensively specced Magus like that was in all honestly, a fairly terrible pullbot build. I know, I played it extensively. And against any decent opposition who had healers who actually had a brain in their head, you did nothing but tickle them and their allies, whist putting yourself in easy reach of all their RDPS and melee train if they so wanted to kill you (as you know, you were using CQ).
The reason a defensively specced Magus doesn't get killed much isn't because hes tanky. Its because anyone decent will ignore you, kill everyone else, and not be bothered to deal with you unless they really feel like it. Outside of pull and stagger, you are not a threat whatsoever. Why waste time focusing on a completely non-threatening class who stacked themselves up defensively?
Yes, you don't play the Magus like a Sorc, or for that matter, a SH, or any other class. You don't play any class like another class, because it's not that class. Obviously, that doesn't make the class good. Your frame of reference for what was "good" seems to be severely lacking.
It is true that if you want to solo 100% of the time, the Magus doesn't have to deal with backlash, not making you so fragile as a Sorc. Great! That's also the same solo potential as every non backlash career in the game. The Magus solo was actually terrible, and would lose to 90% of equally skilled and geared opponents. Although I bash anecdotal evidence, I suppose I will use some just to illustrate this point. Before I quit, I used to spend most of my time in WAR dueling other high RR players. The Magus was and still is, a garbage 1 on 1 class. That being said, caring about 1v1 is pointless in this game and it isn't balanced around it, but Magus/Engie are some of the worst 1v1 classes (and they are definitely, the worst classes in the game, by far).
You act like any RDPS couldn't do the majority of what you can, and also have their own survivability perks (like Squigs, who can kite a billion times better than a Magus could). Any RDPS can eat an armor pot, stack toughness and armor, and run around being slightly harder to kill whilst doing pretty poor damage. This doesn't make the Magus/Engie good classes because they can do it too.
If an RDPS isn't doing good damage (a damage archetype), then they need to bring a significant amount of utility/CC to the table. Simply put, the Magus/Engineer don't have what they need to compensate for their bad damage. The class falls into the generic "jack of all trades, master of none" stereotype, and in this game, that isn't good for a class that isn't a DPS healer, because a DPS healer compared to a Magus or Engie, had even greater solo/small skirmish survivabiltiy if they geared for it, and in a lot of cases, better damage and better utility/CC.
On the topic of the pet mechanic: Yes, it's bad. Yes letting cast on the move will make it better, no, that won't fix these classes. They need much more than that.
