Mag's Abilities Need A Desperate Damage Buff.

[Paradoxbomb]

Crush is the only one that needs a buff. Pull is CC and shouldn't deal any damage in all honesty, Shield Polarize is percentile based and therefore possibly the best damage ability in the game, and Bullet Attractor is essentially a damage multiplier (maybe the end explosion could scale based on the enemy's health but who using it for that anyway?)

 

Personally I think Crush should get a mechanic overhaul to make it stand out from being a standard issue "brief stun and damage" radial AoE. Like how cool would it be if instead of just slamming the enemies back down, she magnetically charges them and turns their bodies into electromagnetic projectiles that she sends out at all nearby enemies (or each other if no new enemies are around). Damage could scale based on the number of enemies picked up or hitting a target, the distance they travel, etc, etc.

[Vortok]

Shield Polarize is amazing, so she doesn't need more anti-Corpus tools.  Thus buffing the damage of Crush wouldn't accomplish a whole lot as Shield Polarize is just gonna beat it anyway.  Pull is pretty solid, minor quibbles about the exact method it uses to pull stuff aside.

 

Applying some type of Status on Crush could prove interesting.  Mag has to stand there for several seconds doing the animation anyway so there's more than just the energy cost in using it.  Perhaps weakening the enemies in some way if/when they live through it.  Such as lowering their damage output, speed (which lowers their dps in another way, though it doesn't impact per shot damage), or making them take increased damage.

 

I like the first one better.  Speed drop and increased damage are already handled by Nova, so no need to make Crush a cheap copy (not to mention the 'mandatory stacking' that might occur in high level missions if the damage buffs stacked).  Most I could see as a damage buff would be lowering armor somewhat (because you crushed it) - probably better frames to give an ability like that to, though.  Lowering the actual damage output of enemies (just 'crushed' them and their weapons, so maybe they're no longer in optimal fighting condition, heh) would help against higher level enemies where their per shot damage starts to really crank up.  Perhaps along with a damage reduction would be decreased chance to inflict statuses, so enemies would have trouble applying a knockdown or grappling you - might be annoying to code something like that, though.  As not all enemies inflict status ailments with high frequency, it wouldn't be the only thing to add but should go well with lowering damage done in the theme of reducing how much of a threat the surviving enemy is.

 

 

The other ability that could use some help is Bullet Attractor.  Basically 75 energy for a single target ability... when we're facing hordes of enemies 95% of the time and can usually kill single enemies extremely quickly already.  And if you're early enough in the game to not have guns that instantly explode bosses, you're probably paying close to the full energy cost for just a few seconds of increased damage - so it doesn't even help kill bosses all that much (Excal Radial Javelin shenanigans aside).  One tweaking idea I quite like at the moment is scaling the explosion damage (when the target dies with BA still active on it) to be based on the damage done to the enemy.  Percent of incoming damage used in the explosion to be decided (could take a cue from Shield Polarize and make it something like 50% impacted by power damage).  That'd make it viable against any faction.

Edited February 24, 2014 by Vortok