[Magus] Looking for THE build

[Foomy44]

I don't understand why there aren't more magus raving about firestorm. It's got 100% uptime and with 1 AP tactic you can literally channel it forever, you can move while casting/channeling, perma snaring AoE that crits for over 1k on squishies easy, and the craziest part is IT DOES NOT REQUIRE LINE OF SIGHT TO CAST OR MAINTAIN!!! Order on your lord? Stay downstairs/other side of the wall in safety and watch the endless stream of 1k crits on their backline. Funnel at a keep door? Perfect, same thing, hide behind a wall, press 1 button, and do more damage than just about anyone else on either side of the zerg will be doing from perfect safety. I really hope no LoS is a bug, Wargrimnir did imply in a different forum topic that all attacks should require LoS to their target (4th post down on page 30 of this topic viewtopic.php?f=42&t=23340&p=262430#p262430 ) but even thou I brought up no LoS on firestorm there still no changes. Until/if they fix it this ability is absolutely broken IMO.

[peterthepan3]

Spec rr into crit max and deft defender if havoc.

Firestorm is epic but not overperforming at all, given it's 13 pt ability.

[Foomy44]

Spec rr into crit max and deft defender if havoc.

Firestorm is epic but not overperforming at all, given it's 13 pt ability.

How is being able to bomb enemy groups from absolute safety when they can't even see you not overperforming in that situation? Fairly certain I see the term risk vs reward come up a lot when discussing balance, and I see no risk and a lotta reward here. 13pt ability does not justify that aspect of it. How about letting BW's 13pt fireball barrage fire through walls and see if anyone thinks that's balanced.

[peterthepan3]

By all means change the los, but the mechanic of the ability is fine. If you're bombing with havoc spec you're doing it wrong anyway and your 'bombing' is essentially one ability.

[Foomy44]

By all means change the los, but the mechanic of the ability is fine. If you're bombing with havoc spec you're doing it wrong anyway and your 'bombing' is essentially one ability.

Only part I claimed was over the top was LoS issue, aside from that I'm fine with it, but I don't see how you can claim bombing in havoc is doing it wrong when you have a great ability for it, I've gotten top DBs/top damage in multiple SC's where firestorm was about 90% of my casts, and in funnels at keep sieges spamming firestorm will put out significantly more damage than any other combination of abilities in a havoc build in my experience, not to mention it's snaring everyone inside for more bombing goodness from your teammates.

[Coma]

Spec rr into crit max and deft defender if havoc.

Firestorm is epic but not overperforming at all, given it's 13 pt ability.

How is being able to bomb enemy groups from absolute safety when they can't even see you not overperforming in that situation? Fairly certain I see the term risk vs reward come up a lot when discussing balance, and I see no risk and a lotta reward here. 13pt ability does not justify that aspect of it. How about letting BW's 13pt fireball barrage fire through walls and see if anyone thinks that's balanced.

bw (and sorc) can already do that with Rof (and PoS)... and you don't see people arguing that RoF/PoS are op... and they anca actualy deal higher damage than firestorm the fact is that dealing 1k or even 1,5k dmg every 2 second... is completely useless unless there is someone else dealing spike damage on top of that... the only thing you get from thet consistent "avarage" damage is to get healers to spend some of their AP on it... but if they have some AP recovery tattic slotted than there is not even an AP watse ^^'

[Foomy44]

to quote wargrimnir from a post further down in that link I posted "Stuff like Pit of Shades, Tzeentch's Firestorm, should definitely require LoS to maintain."

Don't see any point in debating this past that, until they fix it it's overperforming in certain situations.

[Coma]

to quote wargrimnir from a post further down in that link I posted "Stuff like Pit of Shades, Tzeentch's Firestorm, should definitely require LoS to maintain."

Don't see any point in debating this past that, until they fix it it's overperforming in certain situations.

and if you actualy read the full discussion (I was the one arguing with him in that tread ^^) you will also notice that PoS/RoF were like this in live too... they also went trough several nerf/adjustement but the only thing that was never changed was their ability to be used from out of LoS... that is why IF this is going to be changed thatn it will also need for their DAMAGE to be revised... since it was reduced ESPECIALLY due to their ability to be used out of LoS ^^ (rof/pos orginally were able to hit for up to 3k+ dmage... they also staked with each other... both the damage and stackability were revised in order to avoid aving a few BW/sorc being able to control BO/Keep on therir own against 1+ wb WHILE BEING SAFE BEHIND A WALL... and again... what they changed was stackability and damage value... but NOT the ability to be used out of LoS ^^ )

[Foomy44]

to quote wargrimnir from a post further down in that link I posted "Stuff like Pit of Shades, Tzeentch's Firestorm, should definitely require LoS to maintain."

Don't see any point in debating this past that, until they fix it it's overperforming in certain situations.

and if you actualy read the full discussion (I was the one arguing with him in that tread ^^) you will also notice that PoS/RoF were like this in live too... they also went trough several nerf/adjustement but the only thing that was never changed was their ability to be used from out of LoS... that is why IF this is going to be changed thatn it will also need for their DAMAGE to be revised... since it was reduced ESPECIALLY due to their ability to be used out of LoS ^^ (rof/pos orginally were able to hit for up to 3k+ dmage... they also staked with each other... both the damage and stackability were revised in order to avoid aving a few BW/sorc being able to control BO/Keep on therir own against 1+ wb WHILE BEING SAFE BEHIND A WALL... and again... what they changed was stackability and damage value... but NOT the ability to be used out of LoS ^^ )

So you're saying they should change firestorm from live... changes like these?:

- Tzeentch's Firestorm can now be cast on the move
- Tzeentch's Firestorm now has a medium snare effect on anyone within its effect radius
- Chaos Unleashed tactic also reduces the cooldown on Tzeentch's Firestorm by 10s

You really telling me that if they were to remove broken LoS on firestorm that it wouldn't be viable without a damage buff? Few people in here already said it's fine as is if they were to fix LoS. It performs amazingly for me in plenty of scenarios where there's no wall to abuse. And what exactly is the point of bringing up damage numbers from live when we aren't running around in anything close to the same gear/stats that those numbers were balanced around?

[Coma]

to quote wargrimnir from a post further down in that link I posted "Stuff like Pit of Shades, Tzeentch's Firestorm, should definitely require LoS to maintain."

Don't see any point in debating this past that, until they fix it it's overperforming in certain situations.

and if you actualy read the full discussion (I was the one arguing with him in that tread ^^) you will also notice that PoS/RoF were like this in live too... they also went trough several nerf/adjustement but the only thing that was never changed was their ability to be used from out of LoS... that is why IF this is going to be changed thatn it will also need for their DAMAGE to be revised... since it was reduced ESPECIALLY due to their ability to be used out of LoS ^^ (rof/pos orginally were able to hit for up to 3k+ dmage... they also staked with each other... both the damage and stackability were revised in order to avoid aving a few BW/sorc being able to control BO/Keep on therir own against 1+ wb WHILE BEING SAFE BEHIND A WALL... and again... what they changed was stackability and damage value... but NOT the ability to be used out of LoS ^^ )

So you're saying they should change firestorm from live... changes like these?:

- Tzeentch's Firestorm can now be cast on the move
- Tzeentch's Firestorm now has a medium snare effect on anyone within its effect radius
- Chaos Unleashed tactic also reduces the cooldown on Tzeentch's Firestorm by 10s

You really telling me that if they were to remove broken LoS on firestorm that it wouldn't be viable without a damage buff? Few people in here already said it's fine as is if they were to fix LoS. It performs amazingly for me in plenty of scenarios where there's no wall to abuse.

what I'm saing is that skill like firestorm and RoF have their ability to be cast from out of LoS taken into account when their damage was determined... that is how it was configured on live... now... this is not live... and many things have been changed and are going to be changed... firestorm is a good ability... but it is hardly OP.... yes it can overperform ins ome scenarios but the same can be said for other abilities too (Magnet/rift, HTLand may other...) simlary there are abilities that underperform in some scenarios (try using stealth during a siege )

you can't take a single scenario into account to define if an ability is OP or UP but you have to take into account several and take the avarage value of the ability...
for firestorm the ability to be usable on the move does nothing in the scenario where it displey it's best (the one you pointed out before that are siege offense/defense), the CD reduction that allow for it to be used continuously put it on the same level of RoF/PoS (they too can be used continuously by using a specific tattic... that is much lower in the mastery line than the one for firestorm... but the firestorm one also ad other effect..), the snare effect is indeed usefull in those situation but is also true that there are many other AoE snare that can do the same if not better in those same situation (Sham/Am aoe snare for example snare much more than firestorm and in those chokepoint where firestorm give it's best you need a single aoe snare to get all the avaible target snared )
This mean that in the end what truly makes firestorm shine in that scenario is the ability to use it out of LoS... just like RoF/PoS... and onece again after they were nerfed in their damage (that is currently similar/slighlty higher than Firestorm) there were pratically no more argument against them... the only thing I'm not sure about firestorm is if it too is not stackable like RoF/PoS... if it does stack than THAT is an argument that i will concur with you that should go under review without many thought... but if it already does not stack like RoF/PoS than just like for those 2 abilities it stay as a GOOD ability that SHINES in a particular scenraio...
all the other power up that Firestorm recived here on RoR are aimed for it to be more usefull OUTSIDE of that favorable scenario... and had turned it into an ability that is actualy GOOD, contrary to previously being an ability with little use despite being in a lower position in the mastery line ^^


so my conclusion: Firestorm is a good ability overall that perform best in chockehold like similar skill, it does produce a decent damage output but need to be paired up with several other sustained damage or spike damage in order to become effective, this by itslef make it not OP... since an OP ability is something that is either overperfoming all the time or being able to turn the tide on his own...

I'll give a few example of abilites that were changed on live to being OP:

original RoF/PoS, ticking for 3k dmg and stackable, 3 bw/sorc where able to create a death zone by stacking their channeled AoE making chokepoint invalicable without use of defensive morales

original ruin and destruction, 5 sec AOE STUN on a M2

original ruthless assoult, ticking for 2k+ damage every half a second for 3 second, dealing a total up to 12k damage over 3 sec...

original da toughest, able to proc continuously (now it only proc when the effect is over so once every 10 sec at best...) generating continuos self healing

original cleansing power, cleansing one status whenever an ally was directly healed by you... resulting in AoE cleanse whenever you usesd AoE heal ^^'


those are a few example of what was truily OP on live... if you look at those ability they were either overperforming regardless of situation or completely absurd in some specific scenarios (you can look up some BW video from live and will see some hilariuos/terrible scenes ^^')