This thread is dedicated to exposing the imbalance between Mages and every other class in Pocket Legends. All of the statistics and information used in this thread can be easily tested or looked at while ingame. I will also be including scenarios that accurately depicts how a normal fight between a mage and other classes will play out. If you're a individual who is against mages being nerfed, meaning you do not agree with this thread, then i highly encourage you to do your own tests and explain why.
Although i did not initially plan on making a thread today, after a couple honor games and regular pubs played i decided to make this thread now than wait until the expected Honor Update launches. With that being said i want to go over the problems that i have towards mages and explain why the points i will be making in this thread should be contributed to a full fledged Enchantress nerf. I will be focusing on 3 major components that contribute towards mages being vastly more powerful than the other classes. Said 3 are Skill Damage, Critical Chance and Damage, and the lack a more modernised skill set. The last point i will go more into detail as i know everyone will be confused, so let's start with the first of the 3. Skill Damage.
*Skill Damage*
Starting off with the first point. While it is true that critical damage on mages is far greater a problem, we will first have to understand how it got that way. It would not be a stretch to say mages possesses the highest skill damage of all the classes . A perfect example of this is with drain. Drain Life IS the strongest skill of not only the Mage class but also of every other class in the game. Drain locked in at L.6 does a exceeding 253 maximum damage. Let this sink in for a moment. L.6 'Blast Shot' on birds, which is archers strongest attack skill, is a mere 164 damage. Bear's 'Stomp' skill does only does 102 damage at 6. If this isn't enough for you then how about this. The skill 'Lightning' is topped off at 204 maximum damage, followed by fire which is at 197. Drain does 89 more damage than blast, lightning does 40 more damage than blast, and fire does 33. These numbers is what allows mages to dominate over other classes the way they do now.
During the 3pc era of PL we had mages owning the entire game, a literal statement, from 22 to 76. No other class in 56 could stand a chance against 56 mages and it was to the point where a 61 mage could easily kill and beat a 66 leading bird, leading being a set far stronger than lilith. Yet as seen in this videohttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aRUG1XCvww4 a 61 mage had no trouble beating the 66 bird that not only was wearing a far superior set but also had L.9 SKILLS. We're talking far superior numbers compared to L.6 skills but only to be beaten by a 61, a feat that some 2+ years prior would of been impossible.
*Critical Rate and Damage*
Riddle me this. If Archers are the main crit class of Pocket Legends why is it that mages not only hit for more but also hits far stronger in numbers? In L.30 Honor me and fellow player Theburningdex tested months worth of trials just to see if we can make other classes come close to what mages drop consistently on drain alone. I had a point i was going to tie into the skill damage section but i believe it would of better to have it here but i will discuss this last. Mages in 30 honor is why nobody chooses to play it anymore. It's also a driving factor that made dex, a valued member of the community, quit the game entirely. A mage is consistently dropping 400 critical on drain every chance they get, practically 1 shotting every class. Even bears with a updated Iron Blood that many can make the argument for being Overpowered, will fall at it's mercy. Of the 5 classes that exist in this game, mages are the only one that can go past 300. It's not even limited to drain as I've been hit for 400 by both Lightning and Fire respectively and even once by a frost. So because of this being L 30 where Hit% is somewhat not effected by debuffs you'll see why this is a problem.
So how did mages get like this? I'll tell you how. Mages posses 25 Critical chance at L.6. To put this in perspective let it be known that Archers as the main Critical class is locked in at 26, only 1 more than what mages have. Yet that's not the sole reason for why it's so high either, as i said above skill damage adds on to Critical damage. If Archers had a skill damage of 300 I'm more than sure they could do the same.
While on this topic let it be known that this is not strictly honor exclusive. In Regular PvP mages still exceeds past everyone else with critical damage. It's to the point where i could use max damage enchant bird and still have a mage teammate do x2 more damage than me while they're using a 100 armor amulet. Before both Enchantments and Elites were here they did the same thing but as time progress it's getting even worse.
I personally conducted 10 drain tests unbuffed and 3 buffed against a test rhino while i myself used L.30 honor gear. What i received out of this was 3 of the drains grouping up at 155-156 damage, 1 hitting for a extremely low 126, 1 for 166, 1 for 190, and 4 exceeding past 200 damage with 1 landing a crit, the numbers on the remaining drains were 222, 202, 217, and 261 all of which goes beyond the half health percentile in fights. When i did this experiment with buffs included i can't say i wasn't suprised, each and every drain was a 400 critical 1 shot.
*Outdated skill set*
So what exactly do i mean by this? Well to understand where I'm exactly going with this first we'll have to go back to I'd say the eve of 2013. Out launches the class rebalancing patch and we see many things happen such as birds being fully nerfed but the most interesting one of them all was what happened to rhinos. The skill redemption acts sort of like a drain, meaning it's meant to give health back on the initial strike, but what happened was the devs removed the guarantee that redemption will give hp back on any likely scenario. Think of it as 'Chance'. You will have a chance to gain health back from redemption, which isn't part of the skills written description as the it says "damage heals caster", which puts rhinos at the disadvantage of only having 1 reliable heal which also has a slow cooldown. The only true way a rhino could work past this was to aim for more damage at the cost of tanking. This transition caused rhinos to preform extremely poorly to the point that players would have to use alternate combos. Instead of charge followed by redemption for combo damage we instead used combo tempest. This transition crippled rhino so much that they could no longer compete past L 40.
So where does that tie in with mages? For the same reasons why rhinos had their redemption nerf i believe mages should follow. There should not be a guarantee of drain giving health back as it only adds on to mages living longer only to eventually win thanks to overall base damage. If i was to balance mages i would have instead went for a much more powerful heal. The Weapon combo life steal was extremely weak but was good enough to provide enough Health back to keep you alive, unlike drain where a single use could heal you to full health 1 and a half times. A complete overhual of the mages skill set could improve the balances of the class while at the same time promoting the use of team support. The idea of mages Heal having the ability to give a very small sum of mana towards fellow teammates is one of many ideas great ideas.
Mages are easily the most overpowered class in the game and should be dealt with. Though time mages became not only the dominate support class but also the main damage dealer that effects how many team fights were lost. How many times have a player either died or was severely damaged by a mage with no possibility of counter punishing the class? How many tournements hosted from 2016 to 2020 revolved around what exactly the mage does that gave their team a win? Could you imagine if birds could go around 1 shotting everyone in honor PvP like they did with swift in 2012? How many would complain and rant and cry broken at just the thought of it. That's mages. That's what they have become.
