Magus changes. Yes indeedly.
So, what I know of it is:
- For Engineers, a portion of the character's Ballistic Skill, Weapon Skill, and Wounds from equipment will also affect their turrets.
- For the Magus, a portion of the character's Intelligence and Wounds from equipment will also affect their daemons. Additionally, the daemons' autoattacks will now deal magical damage - Elemental for the Pink and Blue Horrors, and Spirit for the Flamer
- For both careers, the character will begin receiving a new effect while they remain near their turret / daemon - Improvised Upgrades for the Engineer, and Unholy Empowerment for the Magus. This effect will start as a +4% damage buff, and will increase every 2 seconds by another 4%, up to a max of +20% damage after 10 seconds. If the character moves away from their turret / daemon, the effect will begin dropping back down, eventually fading from them entirely until they return to their turret / daemon's side.
So my biggest doubt was: just what does "near" and "away" mean?
I found a non-answer.
"The actual range of the turret buff was omission by intent. We're still debating internally what the actual range should be. "
Another interesting question was "Will redeploy reset the timed buff?", to which the answer was:
"As long as you're staying near the turret/daemon, the buff will build up; if you move away, it'll drop off. If you move away and then Redeploy the turret to you, you'll see it start to drop off a bit and then promptly begin building right back up again once the turret "lands".
Nate Levy
And so I've heard say "boohoo, so not enough. I have no reason to spend 2s cast time and God knows hosw much AP (cuz I don't) to summon a meat bag that might give me a small dmg boost if it survives the flow of melee BWs inc to my position"... or something similar. Well, I think its's only fair tro stress out some other things that were disclosed. And I paraphrase:
- This does not involve tactics at all; the damage bonus is a passive benefit of having a turret / daemon out.
- Giving the magus/engy access to a loner tactic is not something that we're looking into at this time
- A network of multiple benefits (like a different aura based upon what you are doing) is something that we're more likely to do as a tactic - we are intentionally aiming to keep the passive effect clean, simple, and straightforward. Additional effects with more subtlety and/or complexity are definitely a possibility for future changes, but aren't necessarily our goal with this specific design.
- It's possible that buildup and/or duration timers may be adjusted in the future, but it's not on our plate right now.
- I currently hope to have these changes in 1.4 (with the caveat, of course, that plans and timelines are always subject to change as needed). I make no statements as to whether "in 1.4" is before or after RVR packs. =)
- Going after the enemy's turret / daemon should be a valid strategy to try and hinder them, as long as the turret / daemon has enough Hit Points to ensure that someone going after it is really focusing on it, rather than just tangentially happening to kill it via incidental splash damage. Ultimately, much of the number-tweaking will be impacted by PTS results and feedback.
That's all I had time and patience to read but all of these statements (coming from Nate Levy) give me hope for the future. We can rest assured that our cries of "LOL Magus iz gimp" have reached the developers' ears and even if you don't consider these changes to be enough, at least there are changes which means its not a stagnant career like, say, a While Lion (*snicker*snicker*).
Cmon, we all have a WL in some server going like:
As soon as I have the time to set up my computer to play some well-deserved WAR, it doesn't work. Luckily, I have an engineer of these matters living under the same roof. All is well now.
