Meta Mage Musings

[parsnip]

Having seen the recent improvements to the Berserker relics and levelled an Marksman talisman, I decided to re-visit Meta Mages recently by levelling a new one. The experience has been quite painful compared to other talisman, particularly the Marksman. As Tony mentioned that he is reviewing the Mage talisman, I thought I'd scribble down a few ideas. In general, it feels like it is the talisman with the low relic variety but one with the greatest potential for variety.

Mana​

Even with Spirit Speak, a new meta mage quickly runs out of mana.
1. Mana reduction: Perhaps some mana reduction could be made as baseline for the Meta Mage and Spirit Speak enhance it (Or just make it baseline and use Spirit Speak for the upcoming Necro talisman instead).
2. Mana return: Shadowy gives some mana return when it activates but it triggers so randomly at the moment. It would be nice if Shadowy either has its activation chance increased or be turned into an active ability. Other forms of mana return could also be introduced via Vivify summons.

Vivify​

1. Summon variety: Add special abilities to the different summons e.g. Earth Elemental with higher armor to tank,
2. Relics: Another idea would be to make summons a little bit like Meta Pets but with just one active relic. The mana return relic from the meta crabs would be an obvious choice and increase the demand for that relic.
3. Experience: A small percentage of the summon's damage could give experience to the Meta Mage.
4. Healing: A percentage of the Meta Mages damage could heal the summon. If Spirit Speak is kept for a Meta Mages, it could be used to enhance the healing.
5. Skill synergy: The skills of a summon could be influenced by the skills of the Meta Mage. E.g. If mage has 100 poisoning, then summon gets deadly poison ability. 100 Inscription could increase the summon's spell damage (It wouldn't hurt if it increased the mage's damage too!). With hiding/stealth, the summon also hides/stealths with the mage. With wrestle/anatomy, the summon gains the ability to stun mobs.

Relics​

1. Active abilities on current relics: The two obvious relics to turn into active abilities are Shadowy and Dispersion. They are both currently passive and trigger at frustratingly random times.
2. New Relics: Still pondering this... A slow and spell interruption like the Marksman would have been useful.

 

[Phrygian]

Good start to a good couple of ideas. Meta Mage could certainly use a few quality of life improvements and some love overall. It's my most played character, far beyond anything else, because I love just playing a pure mage. It has fallen behind in champs and RDAs, as well as farming, due to the new recent changes. (5 Meta Crabs for tamers, the Beserker Buffs, etc). Hopefully we can get some love for the class.

The Summon Demon acting more as a permanent (non dispellable) pet could certainly be cool. As it is, Vivify is almost impossible to level after the recent changes. An overhaul is needed (and planned, we've heard).

Another factor that severely hurt high end meta mage scores at champs etc, was the change to Overkill. As of a few months ago, damage beyond the final hitpoints of a mob no longer contribute to score. This is a huge blow to Meta Mages, as the only way we were able to really compete with tamer/zerker scores (BEFORE their recent buffs), was by abusing Flamestrike/Dispersion as well as Earth Quake on low levels at the champ. This built a huge amount of score early, a cushion, that would let us be near the top by the time the champ finished. The other classes do much more damage as the champ progresses, and their score catches up. This was changed.

What this really comes down to, is that the Meta Mage, even when it was getting competitive score, wasn't *REALLY* contributing to pushing the champ the same way that other classes were. We were only able to *LOOK* competitive by abusing overkill damage on low level mobs (hitting for 200s on low level mobs with far fewer HP than that).

What is really needed, is a way for the Meta Mage to actually contribute to pushing champs on the same level that other classes are able to. The Marksman does the Meta Mages early level job far better with Volley. They do the same thing, abusing the early levels to build massive score, but the damage is *actual* damage, since it's small frequent ticks. It's not hurt by the overkill change.

So, we need to find a way to make Meta Mage damage competitive under these new rules. Either higher Sustained damage (we're severely impacted by Mana obviously), and other ways to provide AOE usefulness in the early levels. An AOE dot, for example, that we spread, and can refresh to maintain the constant AOE damage on low levels. The Demon could provide that late level damage if it were given some new power. For a while, when Tony changed the AOE spells for mobs, the Demon was casting Chain Lightning. This was a really nice perk, for a week. You could buff the Demon's PVE damage (only PVE) via spells, if we can make it actually able to stay around. It just simply gets dispelled after level 2 or 3 of a champ.