Interesting Class Changes
 

Just bored at work and was thinking about how Mages really get the shaft when it comes to CC. Every other caster class (even healers) get some form of CC whether it's root, stun, mez, fear, etc. Mages on the other hand have to rely on their pets for any type of CC which really comes down to the air pet or earth pet. Even then, the pets only proc once every 10 seconds or so which isn't really all that effective at holding down a mob. Additionally you can only have 1 pet out at a time, so if you are soloing with say a water pet or fire pet, you are screwed once a new mob shows up and you either have to pray for the best from your pet, our gate the hell out.

Anyways I wanted to bring up what I think would have been a cool idea for mages. I think it would have been cool to have some sort of CC pet that you can summon ALONG with your regular pet. Here is how I see it would work and make mages have CC but be different then other CC classes.

1. CC pet would be a quick cast maybe, 1-3 seconds.

I would think you would keep this in line with however long normal CC spells take to cast with other classes.

2. CC pet would either root mobs or stun lock them.

The only difference I see here is if you gave mages a CC root pet then they would only be effective at CCing for melee mobs as casters would still be active but rooted. Pet would also not do any damage and is only meant for CC.

3. CC pet would be limited duration by time AND health.

The duration of the pet would only last until that pet was either killed by the mob (being if it was a root pet it would still be getting hit) or a timer where it would despawn, the timer being in line with other classes CC durations. You also wouldn't want this second pet to be permanent as I think it would make it too OP in terms of CC.

Anyways these are just my thoughts on what could have been and I think would have been pretty cool as an alternative of CC for mages, having a second pet. This would make it more interesting to play with a mage in a group setting as well, you would have to be able to control two pets at a time during multi-mob fights. Let me know what you think about it, or even if you have suggestions for other changes to mages or other classes you wish you could have seen. It's always fun to think about what could have been.

Ib4notclassic

I think they gave Mages all of those later on on live...

They had an AA fire elemental pet that would immediately steal aggro from 2-3 mobs tank for 12 seconds then memblur them and die.

They also got a spell line that summoned a gargoyle pet that did huge DPS, stole aggro off your main pet and would die after 30 seconds of being alive - less if he got killed.

The earth pet got a better root and it proced a rune/mitigation buff on itself eventually so you could micro your pet better.

Yeah I quit right after PoP, and I played a Warrior on live so I never actually knew if they implemented any type of change like this.

And yes I realize this ha. I'm not suggestion these changes be made, just thinking out loud for the sake of discussion.

Live definitely made playing classes a lot more interesting.

Unfortunately the content you got to play with these new interesting abilities, sucks.

All the Tasks and Achievements being so cookie cutter, very few interesting/unique quests.

There are a few classes that seem unbalanced before AAs came into play. All the hybrid classes, for instance.

Every other Melee class receives double attack, minus bards.

That's true, but even all the Hybrids get some form of CC. Both paladins and rangers get root, and SK gets fear (although not ideal in a social mob setting). Mages only get root if they limit themselves exclusively to the Earth pet. Don't get me wrong I know that mages can still solo much better than the hybrid classes, I'm just pointing out the CC flaw of mages.

Yeah that does suck. Obviously each class has flaws, that's why I wanted to open a discussion about it. It's always interesting to hear peoples opinions about what changes could have been made.