[Magus] Shocking Jolt -> Strenghten Thrall?

[lyncher12]

Magus doesn't have to nuke himself 35% of the time or reduce his defensive values by 50%... Keep that in mind when you talk about the "ease" at which other classes use their mechanics.

That being said in small 6v6 Magus is definitely struggleing massively, but not only because of their pet.

As for the new pet-heal, it is sadly completely useless. If your pet is in a position where it takes any damage you will have to reposition it as it can't take even survive very "passive" aoe dmg from anything, so healing it is not a viable option. Making the pet a bit tankier vs aoe dmg could however mesh well with the heal and make it so there are some instances where you would want to use heal over reposition/resummoning the pet.

Btw who's gonna be wasting time casting this heal on a pet??, defenitely not me...the thing that concerns me more is why engee got tactic that reduces cast time on gun blast and snipe and magus didnt...

That's because magus gets 15% crit from those mastery slots whereas engi used to get 33% ap cost reduction. You can see which one might have need a change.

and engi gets 15% crit to everything in the right tree where the spec tactic is only for havoc abilities. theres so many filler tactics to even consider for a moment that engineer really needed it is absurd.

[xanderous]

Magus doesn't have to nuke himself 35% of the time or reduce his defensive values by 50%... Keep that in mind when you talk about the "ease" at which other classes use their mechanics.

That being said in small 6v6 Magus is definitely struggleing massively, but not only because of their pet.

As for the new pet-heal, it is sadly completely useless. If your pet is in a position where it takes any damage you will have to reposition it as it can't take even survive very "passive" aoe dmg from anything, so healing it is not a viable option. Making the pet a bit tankier vs aoe dmg could however mesh well with the heal and make it so there are some instances where you would want to use heal over reposition/resummoning the pet.

Btw who's gonna be wasting time casting this heal on a pet??, defenitely not me...the thing that concerns me more is why engee got tactic that reduces cast time on gun blast and snipe and magus didnt...

That's because magus gets 15% crit from those mastery slots whereas engi used to get 33% ap cost reduction. You can see which one might have need a change.

and engi gets 15% crit to everything in the right tree where the spec tactic is only for havoc abilities. theres so many filler tactics to even consider for a moment that engineer really needed it is absurd.

Magus damage is elemental, engie has to balance his ballistic and weapon skill to see the kinda damage numbers magus can do, which means having to slot "fighting chance" which means rip 120 toughness where as magus only has to worry about building intelligence, magus even gets a tactic that buffs their toughness if they wanted to use it, engie also has the issue that they have don't have a mirror of "mutating blue fire, as well as "baleful transmogrification" having no cooldown vs "incendiary bullets" being 10 secounds. "indigo fire of change" is also a superior version of engies "focused fire" that lasts 3 secounds longer and has tenancy sometimes linger on a target even when you get line of sighted, even when firing at folk standing up top of keeps and walls, not that i have a problem with that, the animation it does kinda looks like a curve so makes sense.

The new engie tactic is nice, does help to finish off targets as in the past 2s build time on gunblast often enough targets would just get healed enough in that time to deny a kill, i reckon though the AP cost reduction should have been kept in addition to this change because spamming gunblast every 1s tanks your ap to the point after a typical rotation its just not productive, plus this now means its an extra tactic that engie really did not have the space for as well, so your sacrificing "masterful aim" which kinda sucks.

The new heal does not really make a lot of sense, it shows a disconnect from that actual issue, i've been using it myself honestly and its very niche, if someone focuses the turret, its not gonna be worth trying to save it even with the damage immunity as 3s immunity with a 20s cooldown just means, instead of dying in those 3s , it dies 3s later, being locked in an channel thats costing you you only 10 less AP then simple just recasting the pet, seems like a no brainer. I do think having aoe damage reduction added to the turret and deamon would be a good step in the right direction or at the very least allow them to be effected be group heals i also think flame turret and blue deamon should also give parry buff too as to reflect its obvious intent to work in close range vs melee but these are issues that have been around for a long time, big doubts they will fix that any time soon.

[Starx]

Strafing Run is actually a very useful skill because of its delayed nature and it being an instance cast.
It only counts as "free immunity" in 6vX with a solo engineer interrupting the 6-man's flow, but that can be said about any solo with cc.
I honestly don't understand why the Magus does not have one anymore.

The "new" Firestorm is only marginally better because of the small snare that was added, but it did not add anything new, fun or exciting to an otherwise boring skill.

*By X I mean 1-9 players. 6-man group tend to flee otherwise

The damage of firestorm was buffed very heavily, it used to be a total joke. Im guessing this was done to mirror phos shells as the devs weren't going to give engineer a new skill with terrible scaling.

[catholicism198]

Wrong.
I main both and Focused Fire is superior to Mutating Blue Flame because it's an instant channel vs. a two second cast. Unlike FF, you cannot chain MBF, and any decent/competent player will move out of range as soon as they get hit by Bolt of Change.
The engineer also has Amour-Piercing Rounds to greatly reduce their reliance on weapon skill. If you want to slot Fighting Chance, go right ahead. It's not the reduced toughness will affect you, outside of small scale. Same with Daemonic Pact. I don't even bother stacking weapon skill. Wounds > WS for my play style or anyone that wants to survive morale bombs.

Engineer's moral abilities are also way better, but it's stupid how you can be interrupted or cc when casting one.

You're also forgetting about the Engineer's ranged auto-attack. Something the Magus does not have.

So not wanting to give the Magus a cast time reduction because "they deal elemental damage" is baloney.

Shifting focus,
If they really want to breakaway from these 100% direct mirrors, then they should really look into changing Firestorm and Seed of Chaos.
+Swat aside. Need fun skills.

[paperclipdog]

With the freshly updated 10s CD heal I've now found a use for it!!!

You can heal your pet in some PvE encounters where the aoe dmg is just right aswell as keep fights when it is getting hit by 1(!) Canon.

In order for the heal to be useful we would need either:

-5s CD instant cast, in which case I will prob stop playing because then magus rotation in city will be using that on CD.

or:

-pets need to be a lot more resilient to aoe dmg so you can reasonably heal them every 10 (pls no) to 20 (ok...) seconds when they are not positioned PERFECTLY.

As it stands tho it's perfect pet positioning or resummon it in a better spot, which most of the time works without issue once you've learned how to position it.

[xanderous]

Wrong.
I main both and Focused Fire is superior to Mutating Blue Flame because it's an instant channel vs. a two second cast. Unlike FF, you cannot chain MBF, and any decent/competent player will move out of range as soon as they get hit by Bolt of Change.
The engineer also has Amour-Piercing Rounds to greatly reduce their reliance on weapon skill. If you want to slot Fighting Chance, go right ahead. It's not the reduced toughness will affect you, outside of small scale. Same with Daemonic Pact. I don't even bother stacking weapon skill. Wounds > WS for my play style or anyone that wants to survive morale bombs.

You're also forgetting about the Engineer's ranged auto-attack. Something the Magus does not have.

So not wanting to give the Magus a cast time reduction because "they deal elemental damage" is baloney.

You seem to be confused, mutating blue fire is not a mirror of focused fire, its an extra ability that you can stack on top of indigo fire of change which is actually the mirror of focused fire because its a channel, not sure how someone who mains both classes can get that confused but anyway moving on, so to compare a typical rotation of withered soul, baleful transmogrification, mutating blue fire into indigo fire of change, you are applying 3 ranged dots at 125ft on top of a channel, which lasts 3 seconds longer than focused fire and also gives back AP if you kill someone. Now compare that to engineer, you have incendiary, signal flare and focused fire, 2 dots onto focused fire which lasts 3s less but has quicker interfal of ticks on damage and has a reduced cooldown at 125ft, the argument in regards to magus only having to stack intelligence is that it frees up the options to not have to invest in weapon skill talismans and have to think about a secondary stat for damage. Yes engie has auto attack, magus has better dots, auto attack scales of ballistic skill and weaponskill, magus dots scales of intelligence, i've played a lot of both the classes myself and they have both their own strengths but my magus hits harder and my engie hits faster.

[catholicism198]

Wrong.
I main both and Focused Fire is superior to Mutating Blue Flame because it's an instant channel vs. a two second cast. Unlike FF, you cannot chain MBF, and any decent/competent player will move out of range as soon as they get hit by Bolt of Change.
The engineer also has Amour-Piercing Rounds to greatly reduce their reliance on weapon skill. If you want to slot Fighting Chance, go right ahead. It's not the reduced toughness will affect you, outside of small scale. Same with Daemonic Pact. I don't even bother stacking weapon skill. Wounds > WS for my play style or anyone that wants to survive morale bombs.

You're also forgetting about the Engineer's ranged auto-attack. Something the Magus does not have.

So not wanting to give the Magus a cast time reduction because "they deal elemental damage" is baloney.

You seem to be confused, mutating blue fire is not a mirror of focused fire, its an extra ability that you can stack on top of indigo fire of change which is actually the mirror of focused fire because its a channel, not sure how someone who mains both classes can get that confused but anyway moving on, so to compare a typical rotation of withered soul, baleful transmogrification, mutating blue fire into indigo fire of change, you are applying 3 ranged dots at 125ft on top of a channel, which lasts 3 seconds longer than focused fire and also gives back AP if you kill someone. Now compare that to engineer, you have incendiary, signal flare and focused fire, 2 dots onto focused fire which lasts 3s less but has quicker interfal of ticks on damage and has a reduced cooldown at 125ft, the argument in regards to magus only having to stack intelligence is that it frees up the options to not have to invest in weapon skill talismans and have to think about a secondary stat for damage. Yes engie has auto attack, magus has better dots, auto attack scales of ballistic skill and weaponskill, magus dots scales of intelligence, i've played a lot of both the classes myself and they have both their own strengths but my magus hits harder and my engie hits faster.

I stopped reading when you claimed that fire of change is the mirror of focus fire.
No where did I say they are mirrors. They are the “unique” skills the classes are given to add some “flavor.” Hence the comparison.

[xanderous]

Wrong.
I main both and Focused Fire is superior to Mutating Blue Flame because it's an instant channel vs. a two second cast. Unlike FF, you cannot chain MBF, and any decent/competent player will move out of range as soon as they get hit by Bolt of Change.
The engineer also has Amour-Piercing Rounds to greatly reduce their reliance on weapon skill. If you want to slot Fighting Chance, go right ahead. It's not the reduced toughness will affect you, outside of small scale. Same with Daemonic Pact. I don't even bother stacking weapon skill. Wounds > WS for my play style or anyone that wants to survive morale bombs.

You're also forgetting about the Engineer's ranged auto-attack. Something the Magus does not have.

So not wanting to give the Magus a cast time reduction because "they deal elemental damage" is baloney.

You seem to be confused, mutating blue fire is not a mirror of focused fire, its an extra ability that you can stack on top of indigo fire of change which is actually the mirror of focused fire because its a channel, not sure how someone who mains both classes can get that confused but anyway moving on, so to compare a typical rotation of withered soul, baleful transmogrification, mutating blue fire into indigo fire of change, you are applying 3 ranged dots at 125ft on top of a channel, which lasts 3 seconds longer than focused fire and also gives back AP if you kill someone. Now compare that to engineer, you have incendiary, signal flare and focused fire, 2 dots onto focused fire which lasts 3s less but has quicker interfal of ticks on damage and has a reduced cooldown at 125ft, the argument in regards to magus only having to stack intelligence is that it frees up the options to not have to invest in weapon skill talismans and have to think about a secondary stat for damage. Yes engie has auto attack, magus has better dots, auto attack scales of ballistic skill and weaponskill, magus dots scales of intelligence, i've played a lot of both the classes myself and they have both their own strengths but my magus hits harder and my engie hits faster.

I stopped reading when you claimed that fire of change is the mirror of focus fire.
No where did I say they are mirrors. They are the “unique” skills the classes are given to add some “flavor.” Hence the comparison.

Well they are both channelled abilities that do ticks intervals of damage on a single target, i am not sure why you are trying to argue that the are not mirrors when in the previous post you compared mutating blue fire to focused fire , i think your just trying to troll at this point

[catholicism198]

Spoiler:

You seem to be confused, mutating blue fire is not a mirror of focused fire, its an extra ability that you can stack on top of indigo fire of change which is actually the mirror of focused fire because its a channel, not sure how someone who mains both classes can get that confused but anyway moving on, so to compare a typical rotation of withered soul, baleful transmogrification, mutating blue fire into indigo fire of change, you are applying 3 ranged dots at 125ft on top of a channel, which lasts 3 seconds longer than focused fire and also gives back AP if you kill someone. Now compare that to engineer, you have incendiary, signal flare and focused fire, 2 dots onto focused fire which lasts 3s less but has quicker interfal of ticks on damage and has a reduced cooldown at 125ft, the argument in regards to magus only having to stack intelligence is that it frees up the options to not have to invest in weapon skill talismans and have to think about a secondary stat for damage. Yes engie has auto attack, magus has better dots, auto attack scales of ballistic skill and weaponskill, magus dots scales of intelligence, i've played a lot of both the classes myself and they have both their own strengths but my magus hits harder and my engie hits faster.

I stopped reading when you claimed that fire of change is the mirror of focus fire.
No where did I say they are mirrors. They are the “unique” skills the classes are given to add some “flavor.” Hence the comparison.

Well they are both channelled abilities that do ticks intervals of damage on a single target, i am not sure why you are trying to argue that the are not mirrors when in the previous post you compared mutating blue fire to focused fire , i think your just trying to troll at this point

No, you brought it up, but it looks like I misread something.
Regardless, my post is still valid.

Regarding Indigo Fire of Change and Focus Fire, just because they're both channeled, does not mean they are mirrors.
IFC is actually a copy of Hand of Ruin, with an added effect. It is typically used in the same manner: Cast X, cast y, cast z, cast channel, stop channel after first tick, cast x, y, or z, target should be dead, if not, repeat.
IFC originally needed a long channel because it used to spawn a (useless) Horror if the target was killed while under its effect. You can still see the original effect reflected on the icon.
Fun, but useless.