I think the message regarding mutations was the fact that most magic weapons are useless in their matching mutation. IE fire staff is useless in fire, IG is useless in ice, so on and so forth.
That is a huge issue, and doesn’t touch on the fact that they underperform even outside of those, but especially in those you cannot use them. Melee on the other hand does not have that problem. Since there is no slash mutation or strike, ect.
It’s not the PVP problem, or the generally they kind of suck a lot more than melee weapons pretty much everywhere else in the game. But it is something people have been vocal about since the very first mutation.
I really hope you’re right. After a year of using this clown class (since the overnerfs in october, which we all told them was way too much but they did not listen at all), I’m struggling to see any future to the class. But I do hope you’re right.
I agree with you on that. But we can switch weapons for just a week because of an unlucky mutator. It’s an issue and I want them to fix that, but you know at least you’re unlucky just for a week. PVP mage is the same awful experience week after week after week.
I basically think mages need some buffing/reworks way more urgent in PVP rather than PVE.
Bruh mages are so strong in pvp yall are actually just bad theres no way you can throw huge balls that do 4k dmg and claim its weak bow is somehow considered strong even though fire staff shoots faster, has a bigger hitbox, does about the same damage and has a stackable burn dot. Also has a great escape ability and flamethrower. But its weak DUH
Because they go based off statistics, firestaff is often in the top of leader boards in wars and opr. It’s relatively easy to stat pad so to speak, granted all classes do this, but firestaff is the “king” of stat padding. I don’t think the damage is weak on firestaff per say. Mainly the traits need to be looked at. Multiple traits it has are completely useless. 8 traits give back mana, when you don’t need mana, you can just use a mana pot. The 300 int trait is useless. Traits on the fireball and pillar of fire are useless really. Pillar hits people at full hp 40 percent harder while loads of other weapons get dps increase when targets are below or above certain hp values but not exactly at 100 percent hp. Fire staff rune of empower elite trait is pretty useless, it is a big damage boost but only when you stand inside it. 70 percent of the time you can’t stand it. It’s just a wasted damage boost. If they buffed these traits and made them actually good, firestaff can become beast again without getting a direct damage buff.
Like imagine if they made it so the perk on pillar changes to targets at or below 50 percent hp. Now it gets value on every use. Pillar would have so more much more power.
If they changed the 2 fireball traits to something useful as well.
Make burnout cast significantly faster, maybe have grit.
Like this isn’t about firestaff but it just shows how terrible the devs are at making useful perks, incompetence perhaps. But I’ve been messing around with the blunder buss and on the motor ability, the first trait it tied to it, gives back 7 stamina on hit. Yet when you dodge with motor out it puts the ability on cooldown. Literally a useless trait. Completely useless.
Yeah no, every arena I’ve done since patch is just multiple great swords. Sns great swords have been very common, hatchet great sword. Firestaff is very weak vs these builds, you have to play flawless and then some. Plus mage is just weak in general right with the dodge changes. It’s much more difficult to win close encounters vs melee.
I think the biggest problem , at least concerning PVP is the extremely long casting (pillar of fire , incinerate , burnout).
The animation takes way too long , even if you predict where the person is going , they’ll be able to dodge a pillar of fire placed perfectly most times. This is demonstrated by the fact that the only ‘‘viable’’ build for mages right now is flamethrower , the only mage skill without casting time.
Also , I can’t be the one noticing the low damage on IG compared to everything else.
I do as much damage with my musket basic attack as a IG with a perfectly placed ice spike , with way shorter range , cooldown and cast time. ( And thats taking into consideration that most people run emeralds to reduce thrust damage , so musket / bow does waaay more than ice spike).
I loved how Ice spike used to work , it had a high skill gap but it was very rewarding , being able to lower someone to 20% HP if hit by ice shower rend and perfectly placed ice-spike with all 3 small projectiles hitting , which was HARD to do.
Right now if feels lack luster , also most people playing ranged in arenas (BB , Bow and musket) make Incinerate a useless skill , can’t hit 90% of the time.
Fireball does less damage than a bow arrow even with empowering fireball , with a long ass cooldown.
My idea: increase damage , decrease cast times and slow after casting attacks , increase mana costs. in that way someone thats going around with 350-400 Int can blow up people like other ranged do , but with another resource to have in mind.
4k damage is weak, when I’ll just dodge thru it on my run towards you before slamming your face with my GS for double that damage minimum …just saying. and unless your mage is also gimping themselves by running all Con gear …that 8k damage from my GS is going to one shot you …so yea Mages need some love (don’t get me started on the IG and it’s dot damage)
:sigh: might I remind you that 3 flamethrowers attacked a great axe user, rendering the great axe player confused on what to do because they couldn’t kill all 3. Only 2, probably.
So I’ll say it again…
Nerfs will continue until y’all stop killing melee. Go try to kill healers - nobody will shed a tear. You’d get accolades for killing muskets.
It has been very apparent from launch that whatever metric or data they are using to determine what weapons are “strong” is severely flawed. Just a few months after launch they hit FS with almost a 35% damage nerf when it wasn’t OP. This made the weapon hard to slot in competitive wars. Now they have hit FS with another 25% nerf when the weapon is already one of the worst, all but crippling it.
I remember after that first nerf happened I logged into the game and there was a medium bruiser attacking and harassing me in shattered mountain and I was literally unable to kill him when he ate food, drank pots, and LOS’d. The weapon is so gimped and can be kited so easily it is like playing a different game.
They clearly have thought FS was a top performing weapon for quite a long time now. I suspect this is because they base a lot of their critique off scoreboard and overall damage done. Anyone with high level PVP experience knows overall damage done and score mean absolutely nothing.
I’m so happy to read other mage’s messages and see that I’m not alone with this. I really think there’s no developer playing pvp with firestaff because we have been abandoned for a year now. And I really hope they don’t buff flamethrower/pylon becuase those are not fun to play with nor against.
I hope they buff mage instead with faster casting times or projectile speeds, and for sure more damage in things like pillar, fireball, burnout and incinerate. I think flamethrower needs a rework because its gameplay does not fit at all the gameplay of a mage.
Meteor shower, Ultimate Chill, Empower swapping. These changes nerfed fire staff builds like a truck. Also ultimate chill just doesn’t give the damage bonus as it used to anymore plus other bugs being introduced . I was running KE on both weapons, meteor shower, and T2 Aquamarine with Ultimate Chill. I am not joking I saw around a 35% damage reduction in my overall damage in wars playing the exact same build against the exact same opponents. This is with healers switching to Slash gems also.
The ability to build 30-35% empower and swap to IG for a Storm/Spike and other similar combos taken away was a massive massive nerf. Any FS build centered around empower building was basically destroyed. The ones not running meteor shower probably saw closer to a 15% reduction from ultimate chill and passive empower swapping.
Plus all other weapons got large boosts switching to runeglass weapon gems while FS saw zero or less damage going from pre runeglass T2 aquamarine to Runeglass Opal.
Ah, yeah the empower on weapon swap is a scam, but to be fair it affects all weapons. But I agree it doesn’t make any sense as to why they did it. Mortal empower stays in weapon swap, why can’t keenly empower or mortal power or meteor shower empower etc?? Makes no sense.
We play wars differently, I’m typically always in some sort of kill group, so my dps isn’t typically top tier, but I typically average around 1.5 million even just focusing healers and squishies/ low hp targets I can execute with spike. I did do a war on fresh start, had none of the new gems etc and hit 2.3 million dps, 1st in the war with top damage and assists, stat padded my butt off but that’s what I was asked to do. I was 586 gearscore while there was 625s already. The team we faced was coco wireless but In their fresh start company, so there were a lot of good players on that war. I think what i suggest in that link I posted a little ways up. Would be a great place to start, changing around perks in the tree so they aren’t completely useless. They can improve firestaff in a lot of ways making it beast without directly buffing the damage.
bow is somehow considered strong even though fire staff shoots faster, has a bigger hitbox, does about the same damage and has a stackable burn dot. Also has a great escape ability and flamethrower. But its weak DUH 
