The Magician's Tower

This is the highest rank of Fortify Companion:

Fortify Companion
Slot Description
1: Mitigate Damage Shield (58%)
2: Increase Chance to Avoid Melee by 58%
4: Mitigate Spell Damage by 19%, 160000 total
5: Mitigate Melee Damage by 19%, 160000 total
7: Increase AC by 66

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?i ... ource=Live

When Fortify Companion was first introduced, the idea was that it would last us the full ten minutes and provide a hefty bonus to pet mitigation *and* avoidance in raids and groups. However, with mobs hitting harder and harder each expansion, Fortify Companion is falling off faster and faster. The 100,000 damage mitigation, which was kept the same for several expansions, was finally changed this expansion to scale to higher damage. But the problem is that it hasn't kept up with the % increase in mob damage, and the Mitigate Melee / Spell Damage by 19% slot has increased the mitigation %, making it worse.

But - isn't that a great thing, you ask? 19% mitigation is a HUGE upgrade over the 10-15% we had before.

Sadly, it is not. A higher mitigation % results in higher ABSORPTION and less UP time because mobs punch through the rune and then Fortify Companion drops, and while this still results in the same amount of % mitigated over all, it results in LESS damage AVOIDED, LESS AC, LESS DMG SHIELD absorption, and less SPELL absorption.

In practice, Fortify Companion is dropping in <3 minutes against higher level mobs in groups and in raids with high AoE output. With a recast time of 15 minutes, this makes it less and less useful in today's long, sustained fights. It's still the best defensive AA in our arsenal, but going forward, I think one of two things need to happen:

* The mitigation % needs to be dropped down to 10-15% and the rune absorb increased to about 250,000. Fortify Companion is not 'pet defensive with a rune.' We don't need to mitigate huge amounts of melee damage over a short period of time, only to have the spell drop on us within 2-3 minutes of the fight. When Fortify Companion was introduced, it was designed to be a sustained boost to pet defenses, thus the 10 minute duration. Today's mobs are hitting too hard for this amount of mitigation % on a rune to last, and it's also making us the target of other classes' complaints because they see the ~20% mitigation against named burns and scream bloody murder.

* The effects need to be separated from each other, so that when the runes drop the other benefits do not. A while ago, I thought this was the mechanic, because Fortify Companion never dropped before the duration ended. But harder hitting mobs have taught me that this wasn't it. The spell DOES fall off when the rune ends, and with ~20% mitigation on a 160,000 rune, that goes away fast, and takes with it all the other benefits.

I think this is one of the mage class's priority issues going forward, and I think we need to make sure the devs understand that Fortify Companion's purpose is not to mitigate a huge amount of damage in a short period before dropping, but to provide boosts through the full 10 minute duration.

I'll talk to Eli about it. It's probably more of a rune to them now though. And any change is likely to happen next beta. No promises.

With mages tanking more than any other class, this is more noticable. Problem is it is linked to every pet class. It isn't our AA per say. Some other classes that have speed bump pets love the higher % because their pets do not have the hps to take a round and thier pets will not be taking melee hits unelss things are going wrong. I agree with what you are saying but we might have to fight a lot of other classes on this one.

Thanks Voragath.

My greatest concern with the spell is its duration. The way they're upgrading it, it keeps getting bigger % mitigation but the amount mitigated isn't keeping up with mob damage, which is very obvious in VoA where mobs are doing 20k rounds which, using the calculation of 20% absorbed, leads to Fortify Companion fading in <40 rounds of melee damage. Whether it's practical to increase the rune, I don't know - I think the % mitigated is too high for the rune to get a lot bigger, but I do think we need to be able to keep a hold of the other benefits of such a mainstay AA.

Fleiss: yeah, and I don't think the other classes are all too happy about mages to begin with. This is why I favor the second solution - having the AA split into two buffs, one with the rune, the other with the avoidance and ac, which hurts no one.

Your asking for a new AA basically. It is pretty doubtful they will split this AA into 2, seeing as there has to be a reason why they put a limit on the 'rune' portion.

To me the rune portion is meh, our Earth pets already mitigate DMG quite well. The most important part of this ability is the avoidance portion. Which we may be able to ask for the rune part removed and possibly get a higher avoidance percent as compensation.

I thought they put the rune limit on the AA to prevent mages from using it to tank raid bosses, hence the very large - 100,000 - rune limit for its time. But nowadays trash mobs are hitting for what raid bosses were hitting for, and they haven't kept up with the rune scaling, leading to the present issue of the AA falling off after less than a third of its duration.

I PMed Eli about it. We shall see, I do not think he will be keen on making it as 2 buffs though.

Piemastaj wrote:I PMed Eli about it. We shall see, I do not think he will be keen on making it as 2 buffs though.

Your PM is likely to go unanswered since I've already discussed this with Eli.

After discussing this with Eli, the intent of this AA is actually as a damage shield mitigation ability. His attitude to it not lasting long was basically along the lines of that being the price we pay for our pet taking damage. In essence, if you are using this to tank with, then you pay a penalty of it not lasting long. Finally, he is not going to turn this into a pet tanking AA so we can have our pets tank better than they do.

He even pointed to the description, which kinda does read along those lines. That basically means this isn't going to get an improvement.

Well, you know if you would have answered me today it would have avoided me sending him a PM. But I guess you trying to attack my language in serverwide was much more helpful to our class.

We shall see what Eli thinks about it, and what he is prepared to do as a possible compensation.

Piemastaj wrote:Well, you know if you would have answered me today it would have avoided me sending him a PM. But I guess you trying to attack my language in serverwide was much more helpful to our class.

We shall see what Eli thinks about it, and what he is prepared to do as a possible compensation.

I don't know what you are talking about. I asked a question in serverwide for clarification then had to leave for a baseball game. So I know nothing about any questions or anything after I asked that question. And I'm still not clear how asking for a clarification is "attacking" anyone /boggle