Magus and Engineer changes

Some proposed Magus and Engineer changes have been posted. You can find the thread here.

Details below:

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We wanted to clean up a few issues with Magus and Engineer. We also wanted to add some group utility and help their survivability a bit. The changes are below.

Engineer
-Field Repair moves to Rank 22. This ability is renamed to Shock Grenade. You remove stagger effects from your ally target and 5 others in a 25 foot radius around them.
-Redeploy moves to Rank 3.
-Fixing the issue with Extra Ammo causing wild mobs to agro.
-Land Mine will no longer have a cast time. This should fix most of the issues of receiving an "Invalid Target" message on placement.
-Flak Jacket will no longer have a cast time. The value of the armor buff is reduced, but will stack with other armor buffs. The buff lasts 60 minutes and will no longer have the 20 hit removal condition.

Magus
-Strengthen Thrall moves to Rank 22. This ability is renamed to Shocking Jolt. You remove stagger effects from your ally target and 5 others in a 25 foot radius around them.
-Resummon moves to Rank 3.
-Fixing the issue with Lasting Chaos causing mobs to agro. We are also fixing the tactic Chaotic Attunement.
-Daemonic Infestation will no longer have a cast time. This should fix most of the issues of receiving an "Invalid Target" message on placement.
-Daemonic Armor will no longer have a cast time. The value of the armor buff is reduced, but will stack with other armor buffs. The buff lasts 60 minutes and will no longer have the 20 hit removal condition.

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OK so.... The stagger removal ability, yup I like that as it's a good ability and something that would be totally unique to these careers. Also the cast time removal from Daemonic Infestation is a great move, since the ability will be usable on the move at last and becomes a more useful class specialty. However, there are some issues from a gameplay perspective. Mythic appear to want the Magus to be very static career because of how they rely on the buffs from their static pets and actually have tactics that give the groups benefits if they're near the Magus. This makes it fairly likely the Magus will himself will be staggered and unable to remove staggers anyway, or will be at a distance from their group but so static that they are stand out targets for stealthers and flanking MDPS. Combine this with their many short range (65ft) spells and the fact that now Shadow Warriors will be able to debuff that range further and I'm not quite sure how effective Magus will be in future.

I do like the potential of the changes above and I like the concept, but it's not enough alone. I think the following needs to happen for the Magus to stop being considered the bastard stepchild of everything else...

Rift (Magnet for Engineers) needs to become a core ability for the career. It's a class defining ability that is one of the few things that makes them desirable in groups, but its an option you have to spec very high up in a DPS gimping mastery tree.

Also that same mastery tree has the best looking morale 4 ability in the game, but it's so bad it's quite ridiculous. The Firewyrm's damage needs buffing dramatically or it needs other abilities attached to it.

All changing abilities need their ranges increased to 100ft. Sure there's a tactic you can take to increase it, but it's frustrating that it's an essential if you want to use these abilities at all. Tactics should be optional, not essential and with the Shadow Warrior and Squig Herder changes it will become utterly essential.

Personally I think Havoc DoTs need to have reduced durations so they have more burst, particularly since they're cleansed so easily.

/edit Forgot to say... Remove timers from pets and give them a HUGE damage boost. Their pets right now are a bag of shite.

All of the above applies to Engineers too I believe.