Feedback: Magister

[Dagolar]

Will need to check how performs the Draconic line for "kersplode" things then decide if the +3 caster level from magister is better or not. Magister with draconic stuff twisted will be a very nice spell dps so the other line better be worth the loss of it.

Strange: I was getting entirely the opposite impression. I'll need to take another look at it

I've run through it a few more times;
Draconic Incarnation with a few Magister twists allows some additional free twist slots, and has far superior high tier casting benefits [IE, due to the Antimagic slots in Magister, and some questionable abilities such as the minor summon buff, or utility-based abilities such as cooldown decrease, over DI's damage based abilities].

Were Magister to be cleaned up some, then yes, it'd be a strong contender to take as the primary, especially if it added in school-based flavor rather than straightforward boosts.

As is, I'm still getting the same impression as before. There are no toons I'd want to build for Magister as a primary at the moment: Again, due to the emphasis on anti-magic abilities that have no real direct benefit to the Magister, as well as underwhelming abilities such as the summoning+ [which could be fixed simply by adding a second tier], the weak summons, and the single-focus, twisting-preferred nature of the sigils.

Magister simply isn't polished enough yet to be of interest, but it has all the potential to get there easily.

[krogyy]

I've run through it a few more times;
Draconic Incarnation with a few Magister twists allows some additional free twist slots, and has far superior high tier casting benefits [IE, due to the Antimagic slots in Magister, and some questionable abilities such as the minor summon buff, or utility-based abilities such as cooldown decrease, over DI's damage based abilities].

Were Magister to be cleaned up some, then yes, it'd be a strong contender to take as the primary, especially if it added in school-based flavor rather than straightforward boosts.

As is, I'm still getting the same impression as before. There are no toons I'd want to build for Magister as a primary at the moment: Again, due to the emphasis on anti-magic abilities that have no real direct benefit to the Magister, as well as underwhelming abilities such as the summoning+ [which could be fixed simply by adding a second tier], the weak summons, and the single-focus, twisting-preferred nature of the sigils.

Magister simply isn't polished enough yet to be of interest, but it has all the potential to get there easily.

i don't see how you can call decreased cooldowns utility. if you can cast 15% more spells in the same time period it is a little more than a 17% increase of damage/instakills per second.

also draconic has no abilities that augment spellcasting at tier 5/6 whereas masgister has spell school mastery which gives +3 spell penetration in that school (or if you are an arty +20% blade barrier damage).

.

[Shade]

Tested again post 6/15, here's my full report. Sorry for being slow on this report.. Just in general thought magister was mostly ok, as its suffering from a LOT less bugs then draconic, so I focused on that too much,, but magister could use some love too!

General Changes noticed:
- Not much:
-- Some icons updated. I actaully noticed the bottom left ability (sigil of warding) now uses nearly exactly the same icon for every destiny tho. Thats kinda odd. Though for the most part, I like the new icons.
- Icons not updated: The more important ones - buff/debuff effect icons. EG: Variable resistance and sigil of energy negation both use the exact same icons as resist energy. Also now shared with Draconics Energy Sheathe..
I mean so much work put into nice icons, but they only affect hotbars, and generlaly hotbars arent as critical since you can sort of remebmer where things are. buff icons shift around so much you cant do the same.

Innates:
50 SP per lvl, +1 CL per lvl. Same as Draconic, and now balanced with exalted. However some of the nicer EDs have various cool abilities in addition to the obvious. EG: Shadowdancer 2.0, Dreadnaught.. So adding some more fun stuff here, and for draconic would be nice.

ALL Sigils:
As many other poster have said: Durations are far too low, especially combned with the very long cast times and cooldowns.
Please up duration to 80 seconds, and allow extend metamagic on all. This would really help in multiple ways:
Encourage ppl to get extend again, which is fun for everyone, especially melees who enjoy longers haste/rages. Plus they are essentially spell buffs.. Extend should work on buffs!
-Fix duration woes without making them last too long for people unspecialized in long spells.
-If you feel they need to be balanced against this, increase SP costs to say 40 SP each.

Specific:
Sigil of spell warding - Newly upgraded:
Now 1 AC and 5 PRR per rank (3 AC, 15 PRR at rank 3). I would have liked to see the SR stay on this. But at least this will be useful for stationary raid fights vs tough melee bosses (EE Lord of Blades comes to mind). But again the low duration will make it very hard to maintain, as casters are generally very busy in this raid wit many other duties too, and cloudkill will remain superior for this purpose (-20% damage, vs maybe ~4-8% from the PRR, since tanks will have some to begin with)

Lifeshielding:
Light dmg is very weak on arcanes, not much point in this one imo. Deathward is something you want to have while running around, not sitting in a small bubble, and its something everyone has pretty easy access to at high lvl (clr/fvs are abdundant.. plus flesh render googles are pretty trivial to get when ur at epic lvl). I'd suffer a complete revamp. Maybe:

Sigil of Sundering:
Inscribes a runic sigil on the ground where you designate. This sigil reduces enemy armor class by 10, increases their vulnerability to physical damage by 10% and lowers fortification by 20% to all enemies inside of it. Also deals 1d4 force damage per caster level, every 2 seconds to those inside of it.

This would make it a nice way to help melee deal increased damage, but generate some damage/trheat, so the caster would be at risk.

Energy Negation:
Good one. Lots will take it as variable resistance isnt bad either and its a prereq.

Battlecraft:
Was duration reduced to 30s?? 2min cooldown? We need LONGER durations on these, not lesser with massive cooldowns, they are not that powerful to warrant such restrictions. Please increase. It's VERY risky for casters to be standing together in tight quarters. EG: LoB: Suicidal as your healers will all be knocked down and your tank will die. The risk and cost are known: Long CD, spell point cost, stationary and small aoe.. The massive CD and poor duration is not needed.


Unearthly reaction:
Works. I like it. Will be a ver popular one to twist in.

Impregnable mind:
I like it. Will be a ver popular one to twist in.
Bugs: Saves and concentraion works. No fail on a 1 does not.

Variable Resistance:
-Think its working now.
-Kinda nice.. Not easy to get stacked, but can be good in some situations...
-Would really be nice if this triggered whenever you get hit by energy damage like I kinda thought it would. Currnetly it only triggers when you get HURT by energy damage.. So if you have 30 resists, or say 40/50/60 or 120 from stacking with shield, and that negates the damage.. Then it doesn't work. It's kind an ability that defeats itself a way due to this:
EG: Fireball does 30-50 dmg:
roll 1. 35 dmg, (u have fire resist on obviously) take 5, variable resistance proc! (resist now 40)
roll 2: 42 dmg , take 2 dmg. proc #2 (resist now 50)
roll 3: Doesnt matter, you cant proc it further. Course ur immune anyways now, but what if u face a harder mob soon, like the boss and he does fire dmg too in like 1min? too bad, it ran out..

Specialist/Familiarity/Augmentation/etc line:
They all seem to work nicely and they are the bread and butter of this ED. Only tested evocation and conjuration ,as those are the 2 schools my sorcs spec'd in.

Nullmagic strike/guard:
Both seem to work well, but as i've mentioned before, they proc at far too low a rate to ever reasonably charge up the epic moment. I'd suggest lowering the epic moment to only require 10 charges, and upping its duration a lot.

Call Kindred Being:
Update notes:
CD: Reduced to 1min, thanks for that.
Duration: Doesnt display anymore, think its 10min now? maybe still 8min, didnt check as they generally died in 1-4 seconds.
Most disappointing enhancement =/
Was really exciting by this one, as the descript told me it was an "Epic" summon. And I knew from experience, the only other summon in the game described as epic - the epic tharaak hound, was quite good.

Yet.. all of these are terrible and in no way "epic".

Evocation:
Summons a Epic Living Meteor Swarm. Sounds awesome right? Sadly it isn't. It's a severely crippled living meteor swarm. I dunno why you actually took the time to create a crippled version, you could of just pulled any quests version and used that, and it would still not be that "epic".

Previous beta stats:
CR20, pretty much terrible.

NEW: They now scale with difficulty selection.. This isn't really a good thing in this case though.

Current beta, epic normal:
CR nerfed to 15. CR15 is an EPIC summon? What?
Terrible. Died in 2 hits.
I mean you gave it a SP bar, it can only cast 3-4 spells and its done. Makes no sense. It has very poor dps, very low hp, it doesnt need to run out of its own spell! Its a LIVING Spell, that cant cast its own spell, brilliant lol. It should not have an sp bar, it should cast its spell when it wants to.

Epic Hard:
CR20. Terrible.. As much as last beta.

Epic Elite:
CR26.
HP: Dies in 1 hit.
Spellcasting:
Cometfall - 300 dmg, so maximize enabled at least. dunno bout empower. on EE at least.

Meteor Swarm - bout what you expect for something without any enhancements or item boosts, pretty weak.

Like the other version, it runs out of SP in 3-4 spells, then sits there and does nothing at all. It regens 5 sp every once in a while, spamming your combat log like a jerk telling you all about his uber sp regen.. But it takes like 1 minutes for him to regen enough to cast another spell, its useless.

Only good news here:
Cooldown reduced from 8 minutes to 1min. Though actaully I wasnt able to cast him more then once or twice .. Seemed to bugged out after that and I could not ever cast it again, even after I relogged. Even tried swapping to draconic destiny and twisted him in, no go. So he permanently died i guess.

Did a respec for conjuration to check:
Says it can make a "Greater" "Epic" iron/clay/stone and flesh golem. Implies you have some choice, but you dont, its just random which u get.

(note: testing done in epic normal kings forest, not that we have a choice in difficulty here...)

What you get:
A random, CR12 .. Yes TWELVE.. Terribly weak golem.

Iron Golem:
Stats:
CR.. 12.
- Maybe 400 hp, probably less.
- Vers a CR21 in kings forest: He got it to 95% and died. Terrible dmg output, no tanking ability, all around useless.

Stone Golem:
CR.. 12.
- Fought a wolf. Lost terribly in seconds. He could not even hit the wolfs ac (miss, miss, miss - guess he missed out on the combat update too). My 8 str sorc could...

Clay Golem:
CR.. 12.
- Ran into a random quest here (save shopekeeper) ,was like 10 drow, so he died in um 2 seconds to .. fireball spells.
Pretty sad. In pen and paper he would be immune to those. DDO: Dies almost instantly from weak fireballs that could not threaten the weakest player.

Flesh Golem:
Meh I gave up before i got him, as bad as the rest im sure.

Please MASSIVELY boost these and all summons. With two high tier enhancements dedicated to summons, magisters deserve better.

Suggested stats:

Epic Norm/cas ver:
CR21 (20 is not epic!)
-~600 hp on the squishy meteor swarm types.
-NO SP BAR limitations. It costs us enough SP to summon these as is. Maybe up the SP costs if you think it needs it. Say 60 would be fair for an epic summon.
- 1500 hp on the melee golem types.
- Severely upgrade attack bonus.
- High DCs on there specials, there not goan be useful for dmg output regardless due to there very slow attack rates. At least let the stone golem have a good chance at petrify, the claw one a good tho at cursing, etc.

Epic hard ver:
-CR:35
-1500 hp on squishy types. 3k on tank types
- further upgrade attack and save DCs.
- Maximize for caster versions.

Epic Elite:
-CR:55
-2500 hp on squishy types. 9k on tank types
- further upgrade attack and save DCs.
- Maximize and empower for caster versions.
- Dmg output should be at over 100 a swing, considering enemy hp totals and the slowness of there attack rates.
- Maybe a perma haste buff on all the melee types to negate some of there slowness.

[Artagon]

snip

Nice detailed post. I agree that the duration should be a bit longer. I also thing the cast time should really be lower with how low effect most of these sigils are.

As for the summons, they should really not be scaling. In the end, I'd prefer that each of these summons work like hirelings to make them truly epic. Think panther, then add 5 levels and make it thematic for each of the schools. The generalist (no spell focus attachment or melee) could get maybe an animated armor or one of those annoying blade clouds in shavarath.

I didn't notice when I was online, did the nullmagic strike get changed to add on melee attacks as well? Regardless, I agree the proc rates are so low as to make the current implementation of the aura take far too long to build. This is especially true with the once per 30 seconds limitation on the guard. Speaking of which.. why? The proc rate is already extremely low, so why is there a 30 second limitation on it? This artificial cap is all wrong, and reminds me of "Deflect Arrows" - perhaps DDO's most useless feat in it's current implementation now that mobility actually provides dodge as a secondary ability.

[oberon131313]

Nice detailed post. I agree that the duration should be a bit longer. I also thing the cast time should really be lower with how low effect most of these sigils are.

As for the summons, they should really not be scaling. In the end, I'd prefer that each of these summons work like hirelings to make them truly epic. Think panther, then add 5 levels and make it thematic for each of the schools. The generalist (no spell focus attachment or melee) could get maybe an animated armor or one of those annoying blade clouds in shavarath.

I didn't notice when I was online, did the nullmagic strike get changed to add on melee attacks as well? Regardless, I agree the proc rates are so low as to make the current implementation of the aura take far too long to build. This is especially true with the once per 30 seconds limitation on the guard. Speaking of which.. why? The proc rate is already extremely low, so why is there a 30 second limitation on it? This artificial cap is all wrong, and reminds me of "Deflect Arrows" - perhaps DDO's most useless feat in it's current implementation now that mobility actually provides dodge as a secondary ability.

I actually find the guard goes off quite reliably with my melee artificer, generally once every 3 encounters or so. Maybe not as much as people would like, but enough to keep me coming back for more.

The descriptions have been updated on the wiki as of the last update; doesn't look like melee strikes got added, but it now reduces SR.

[Artagon]

I actually find the guard goes off quite reliably with my melee artificer, generally once every 3 encounters or so. Maybe not as much as people would like, but enough to keep me coming back for more.

The descriptions have been updated on the wiki as of the last update; doesn't look like melee strikes got added, but it now reduces SR.

But see, this is my problem with that, legendary dreadnought gets counters for every successful tactical strike, and they have 20 more counters that they have to get.. but they can pull off at least 4 per fight. So lets assume for a moment that your strike hits 1.5 times per fight, and nullguard hits .33 times in a fight.. and the dreadnought pulls of their stuff 4 times in a fight.. that means that it takes about 17 fights to build your moment.. whereas the dreadnought achieves his moment in 13 fights. I think we can also agree that the dreadnought's moment is significantly more powerful in most situations.

[oberon131313]

But see, this is my problem with that, legendary dreadnought gets counters for every successful tactical strike, and they have 20 more counters that they have to get.. but they can pull off at least 4 per fight. So lets assume for a moment that your strike hits 1.5 times per fight, and nullguard hits .33 times in a fight.. and the dreadnought pulls of their stuff 4 times in a fight.. that means that it takes about 17 fights to build your moment.. whereas the dreadnought achieves his moment in 13 fights. I think we can also agree that the dreadnought's moment is significantly more powerful in most situations.

I completely agree that the null magic aura counter is too high, but the proc rate of guard is well balanced.

Null magic aura needs to drop to 15 or 10.

[Dagolar]

i don't see how you can call decreased cooldowns utility. if you can cast 15% more spells in the same time period it is a little more than a 17% increase of damage/instakills per second.

also draconic has no abilities that augment spellcasting at tier 5/6 whereas masgister has spell school mastery which gives +3 spell penetration in that school (or if you are an arty +20% blade barrier damage).

.

By the very exact basis we ascribe utility and not damage function to the Quicken Spell metamagic feat.
An extension of that is that noone ever mentions how superior sorcerers are to wizards in end-term damage for their innately faster spellcasting; Though in that case, between SLAs and superior SP, there may be validation for the association.

If your casters actually are needing to spam the exact same spells to get their point across, that's a gameplay style that I simply don't have a point of reference to work with, and I imagine utilizes many spell point potions.

Also, ah, a nuance.. How exactly do you insta-kill something 17% more than the once?

In any case, for top tier abilities, Draconic Incarnation gets a sp/hp regen effect, a damaging abundant step, and a draconic breath ability. Overall I rate these as more beneficial to spell casting potency- and regardless of the validity of that, they're certainly far more interesting than Magister's top tiers.

Besides, again, note another point I made: You have to spend ALL your twists on DI if you're a Magister to get the same spell boosting benefits- excuse me, to get HALF of them (Spell Pen, and four damage+ abilities. Additionally, Barrier of scales seems to offer far more use than Sigils as they are, and would likely be a useful twist as well).
With DI, you slot at most two from Magister- that is, Spell Pen and the very same reduced cooldown mentioned- and have a slot left over, which you'll likely spend on a Fatespinner stance.

There's nothing wrong with having Magister offer more utility than power- that is, after all, what wizard-styles do better than sorc-styles.
So, back to the point of Anti-magic, summoning+, sigils, and the rest all coming across as not very meaningful.

[soulaeon]

Were Magister to be cleaned up some, then yes, it'd be a strong contender to take as the primary, especially if it added in school-based flavor rather than straightforward boosts.

As is, I'm still getting the same impression as before. There are no toons I'd want to build for Magister as a primary at the moment: Again, due to the emphasis on anti-magic abilities that have no real direct benefit to the Magister, as well as underwhelming abilities such as the summoning+ [which could be fixed simply by adding a second tier], the weak summons, and the single-focus, twisting-preferred nature of the sigils.

Magister simply isn't polished enough yet to be of interest, but it has all the potential to get there easily.

Agreed here. Magister is not very appealing right now, and the Draconic Incarnation looks much nicer in comparison.
Some school-based improvement could be added, or school-based protection. One of the developers said that Magisters are supposed to protect a party from the very powers they wield, so why not add some kind of spell resistance or spell reflection ability, rather than an anti-magic sigil?

[Ertay]

Well the only good thing about magister currently seems to be that its advantages are very easy to twist in while you level something else. The only ability that really stands out is +3 to chosen school dcs and then thats pretty much it.

The Sigils sound nice in theory, but I really can't see any place I'd really want them in. For general questing they are far too slow, and only during the tougher boss fights I might use them occasionally, but the feel of setting up a magically warded area for your companions does not really get across with the minor buffs they grant; mostly because balling up in a small area is general not a good idead outside of really static fights.

Nullmagic strike is just bad as a passive proc. I can see how an occasional silence spell might be cool, but with no way to control it, the proc chance is not that great and will get wasted on melee mobs who don't even have something to cast more often than not. Maybe an activated ability that charges through procs might have worked better, and even this is weaker then what wizards in general have available already (hold slas from archmage for example).

On a sidenote, do magic missile spells still count as a spell for each missile? That would be the only reasonable way to build stacks quickly it seems...

[oberon131313]

Just confirmed that Nullmagic strike is working with melee and ranged attacks. Super happy about that change. Updated the wiki to reflect that change.

[Brattyone]

...

Sure, you can twist the DC boost or whichever Sigil appeals to you most, but there's also all of the following: a 15% chance per enemy that you hit with a spell of your school to reduce a save by 5-10 points, a 15% reduction in cooldown for spells of your school (which equates to an increase in DPS if you happen to be a conjuration/evocation-focused nuker), and the ability to boost your maximum caster level on spells of your school by 3. That's a lot more than you can possibly twist and, I would say, amounts to a substantial array of upgrades.

I haven't read all 3 pages of the thread yet; so forgive me if someone else has covered this. I find that other than raising my intelligence and raising my dc's, there's really not anything all that great about it. The whole left side of that tree doesn't appeal to me. The sigil's are pointless really. I can't remember when when I could just stand still for any length of time in order to benefit from them. I play a wiz and she's human and squishy. Now, she can definitely hold her own.....as long as she's on the run and not standing still getting pounded on for more than a few seconds. If those sigils were more like auras that followed the caster...then I'd look more closely at them. But as it stands now...no. Speaking of squishy, I thought I'd try out the summon kindred being...the "epic lich" and I was shocked. The CR is 12! It lasted for about 2 minutes and that was WITH me following it with my death aura on. I'm sorry but if you tell me that I can have an 'epic lich', I want it to actually BE an epic lich. Please please please fix this. I know it's going live on Monday but I just had to say something.

[patang01]

I haven't read all 3 pages of the thread yet; so forgive me if someone else has covered this. I find that other than raising my intelligence and raising my dc's, there's really not anything all that great about it. The whole left side of that tree doesn't appeal to me. The sigil's are pointless really. I can't remember when when I could just stand still for any length of time in order to benefit from them. I play a wiz and she's human and squishy. Now, she can definitely hold her own.....as long as she's on the run and not standing still getting pounded on for more than a few seconds. If those sigils were more like auras that followed the caster...then I'd look more closely at them. But as it stands now...no. Speaking of squishy, I thought I'd try out the summon kindred being...the "epic lich" and I was shocked. The CR is 12! It lasted for about 2 minutes and that was WITH me following it with my death aura on. I'm sorry but if you tell me that I can have an 'epic lich', I want it to actually BE an epic lich. Please please please fix this. I know it's going live on Monday but I just had to say something.

I'm thinking strongly about magister for my Sorc and twisting the elemental damage increase from the sorc destiny along with the +2 DC to evoc/conjuration.

Why? The tier 6 sorc stuff sucks. It just doesn't do much. The temporary stuff doesn't proc that often and it's temporary; meaning doesn't add. And the BIG event thing just doesn't build up very well that you will use it often enough to matter. About the only thing that WOULD be good is Draconic fury but it has a long cooldown and +20 spell power ever so often for 20 seconds rely on big mobs to really smack down and the reality is that it doesn't happen that often.

It's true that there are a lot of things in the magister tree that might not be all that great, but the ability to cover two DC breaking features that'll increase the ability to land pure DPS and then twist what's good about the draconic one makes me wonder if I shouldn't go magister.

The more I look at it, the more I like it. It all depends of course but the tier 6 stuff in the draconic one after playtesting it for a while leaves me very cold.

[soulaeon]

I'm thinking strongly about magister for my Sorc and twisting the elemental damage increase from the sorc destiny along with the +2 DC to evoc/conjuration.

The first three tiers of Shiradi Champion look like a good combination, too.

[Credinus]

Alright, having spent quite a bit of time as a Magister Archmage now, I'll offer my thoughts and recommendations on the Magister ED, enhancement-by-enhancement. I'll preface this by saying that as a whole, one thing I find sorely missing in this tree that should be there is the presence of SP-related and/or metamagic-related enhancements, as magisters in PnP are generally known to be more versatile than a common wizard with their spell slot allotments. I've included this train of thought in some of my recommendations. So without further adieu, let's get on with it...

Magister Level Perks
As Shade mentioned, along with Draconic Incarnation, the perks for progressing through Magister levels are fairly bland. Useful? Certainly. But they could really use another active or something along those lines to spice them up. My recommendation: Keep the +50 SP/+1 Caster Lever per level progression as it is, and also add an active ability at level 3 that has a 4 minute cooldown and makes all metamagics free for 15 seconds.

Tier One
Sigil of Warding Pretty solid ability, only one minor recommendation on it: Increase the AC bonus to +2 or perhaps even +3 per rank. Additionally, a problem with all of the sigils mechanically, many of the times I try to cast a sigil I either get an Out of Range error or the sigil appears nowhere near where I wanted it to. Definitely a bug that needs to be looked into in the future.
Imperceptible Casting Another solid ability, and assuming it works correctly (I have not done any testing with this one), perfect as-is.
Unearthly Reactions/Impregnable Mind Useful passives, pretty much in-line with other Tier 1 passives; fine as-is.

Tier Two
Sigil of Lifeshielding This one feels really out of place. As Shade mentioned, arcane magisters aren't going to be very proficient in light damage; the sigil also doesn't make much sense thematically and doesn't provide any unique benefits that aren't easy to get otherwise. My recommendation: Replace the sigil with one that lasts 30 seconds with a 1 minute cooldown, and regenerates 2 SP/rank every 2 seconds for people standing in it.
Fade Into The Weave This one is another fairly solid ability. However, in my (admittedly limited) testing, it seemed to only trigger the diplomacy effect on the target selected. Plus the fact that it requires a selected target to use the ability in itself should probably go away. If it is indeed only triggering diplomacy on the single target and not other mobs around it, that needs to be changed.
Spell School Specialist Perfect as-is.

Tier Three
Sigil of Energy Negation Another great one as-is, no change necessary.
Variable Resistance Conceptually, this one is a pretty neat ability. The problem is that the ranks only increase the duration, and not the strength of the resistance. Given how the ability works, I can't see many scenarios where you'd be able to sustain a stack of resistance from it for one minute, let alone three. My recommendation: Change the max stack size to be +2/per rank (2/4/6 progression).
Piercing Spellcraft Fine as-is.
Spell School Augmentation Perfect as-is, arguably the best enhancement in the entire tree.

Tier Four
Sigil of Battering Spellcraft Perfect as-is.
Nullmagic Guard Perfect as-is.
Call Kindred Being Conceptually brilliant, currently utterly worthless. While I can't speak for any of the summons besides the evocation living meteor swarm (though judging by others' comments, the other summons fall in the same boat), this ability is a total waste of AP right now. It is bugged by inaccurate dungeon scaling, and marred in design by having a spell point pool. I took the living meteor swarm for a test run, and it ran out of spell points quite quickly, plus its slow SP regen left a lot to be desired. On top of that, it doesn't really even cast meteor swarm, it just shoots out single meteors (which dealt around 300 damage a piece). Recommendation: Fix the dungeon scaling and either remove the SP pool or bump its regen from +5/tick to +15/tick.
Spell School Familiarity This ability is a reasonable one, though I think its value is a bit on the low side. Save for a small handful of spells, you're generally not going to get even a full second of reduced cooldown from this. My recommendation: Bump up the cooldown value from 5%/rank to 7%/rank.

Tier Five
Nullmagic Strike Perfect as-is.
Grand Summoner Fine as-is, though I have heard it does not stack with augment summon as it is supposed to; if so, that needs to be fixed.
Spell School Mastery Perfect as-is.

Tier Six
(Note: I have not yet reached Tier Six so my observations here will be based on ability descriptions and related posts I've come across on the forum.)
Arcane Tempest Assuming that this spell is properly affected by all force-damage/evocation amplifiers and counts as a high enough spell level to not be nullified by mantles of invulnerability, then this is a really amazing ability. If any of the above conditions are not met, then those need to be addressed.
Nullmagic Aura Another really amazing ability, assuming that it works as described. Some have suggested that it takes too long to build the stacks for it, but that would be based on the build as far as I can tell; I know that with my build, a 15% proc is very reliable and easy to keep up.
Arcane Adept A mostly good capstone, though from what I hear, it is only giving a 5% cost reduction instead of the stated 10%, and isn't correctly stacking with similar effects; if so, those need to be fixed. My only recommendation for the ability: Additionally have it reduce the cost of metamagics by 1 SP

That's my take on it; so far I've enjoyed the Magister ED for the most part, and I think it just needs a few tweaks and (like pretty much all the ED's right now) numerous bugfixes to really shine.

[Faent]

Why does Piercing Spellcraft now require the Spell Penetration Feat as a pre-req? Please remove this pre-req.

[soulaeon]

Could we please have Arcane Initiate count towards the prerequisite for the spell school specialization, or Piercing Spellcraft?
I just dont see this tree being as useful as the Draconic one. The only reason I would want it more than just a stat increase, is if I didnt need to take extra feats when Arcane Initiate works exactly like a spell focus feat, and it works just like Spell Penetration. This pigeon-holes sorcerers who might want to take Magister, because most sorcerers may not have room for anything but Arcane Initiate or Arcane Prodigy as their spell focus. I'm strongly considering, after mastering DRaconic Incarnate, two tiers of Magister and then four into Shiradi Champion because the cost benefit would be greater than three or four tiers of Magister.
Magister also may not appeal to anyone else but arcane casters, besides the first tier. So it really is a bland tree compared to some others.

[Faent]

Could we please have Arcane Initiate count towards the prerequisite for the spell school specialization, or Piercing Spellcraft?

I wouldn't mind if Arcane Initiate counted as a pre-req for Piercing Spellcraft. Requiring Spell Penetration as the only prereq is just mean-spirited. We're already dropping Spell Pen now thanks to Wizard and FvS past lives. And now, to pick this portion of the already boring Magister tree up, we have to retake one of these feats? That's not nice. If you've dropped these feats, you're already losing +8 Spell Penetration from feat loss (no Spell Pen +2, Greater Spell Pen +2 or Epic Spell Pen +4) as a result. Isn't that enough of a penalty? Do we have to turn this into a cost of +11 Spell Penetration thanks to the currently mean-spirited prereq requirement for Piercing Spellcraft? Come on. Give us our +3 from the Magister line without having to take Spell Penetration (either by removing the prereq completely or letting Arcane Initiatie count for it).

[Scattaminkey]

Arcane Adept does not decrease the spell costs of my spells like the description reads. I am currently a WF 20 Wiz / 3 Epic fully built into Magister 5. I have chosen Arcane Adept for the reduction in spell cost and have found that there is a math error in the description for the Rank or that the formula that calculates the spell cost is wrong. I have no feats active and see that my Wail of the Banshee states "Spell Point Cost: 48 (Base: 50)". To fix this error simply change the calculation of the spell cost by inserting (int)SP_cost*.90 or however you type cast in the language this game is programmed in. When I cast the spell the 48 spell points are deducted in full from my mana pool, so there is not just a description typo. I can report however that the Battle Arcanist set does reduce cost by the correct percentage since the two would not stack. So I would encourage the responsible parties to please fix this small error so I can enjoy swimming in my spell point pool.

Thank you and have a nice day. :P

[sephiroth1084]

Does anyone know if the Necrotic Touch/Bolt/Blast SLAs from Pale Master count as "offensive necromancy spells" for Necromancy Augmentation (chance at -5 to Fort saves)?