They are coming soon...

A friend of mine mains BaM, and he gave me his opinion:

"This is deeply flawed.
That's the only word I can use to describe it. It has its good parts, but the bad is so overwhelming, it's just awful.

1) If you want to (speed)cap, you're forced to use an estaff again. You'll only reach fast 4 natively with slow 8 staves. This is a huge dps reduction.
2) inability to stack auras makes most of the auras useless and wasted SP.
3) reduced incentive to party a battlemage because of the no stacking auras and the reduction in benefits to the party. We're already weak, this is just that much more reason to pass us up.
4) extremely reduced training experience. dodge rate is reduced to 15% from 80%. Blood drain is removed and replaced with an aura we cannot stack. BKB has a 9 second cooldown. Teleport range mastery removed, and teleport invincibility removed. All of this combines to make training very difficult, which was one of our only remaining advantages.
5) no new skill animations? Seriously? We're the only class left from preBB days (BaM's skill animations were introduced in pre-BB tespia) that still have our derp-level animations. We look ridiculous, especially when you consider the hitbox of FB is nearly twice as big as the animation image.
6) removal of the 15% max crit damage on battlemaster is more damaging than you think, especially for a class that relies so heavily on crit rate.

Now that I've gotten my griping out of the way, the good:

1) Better teleport and an extra 50% hp from conversion is much appreciated.
2) the reaper system helps give us a better overall theme and adds an interesting mechanic that sets us apart.
3) the change to dark lightning makes it infinitely more useful
4) FB's damage change to 330% is welcomed, considering that's about the same as chain lightning.
5) removing BB and GLA helps us by removing the constant rebuffing issues we have.


Again, this is a deeply DEEPLY flawed "revamp" to a class that's already struggling to keep up. Pretty sure Bishops match or beat our DPS if this is the final version.

Changes need to be made before this goes to the live servers. If you're a KMS player, I beg you to raise hell over this. They've listened to concerns over battlemages in the past."

?
But the auras give passive effects which are more than worth the SP spent. BAMs heal 1000 flat HP every 4 seconds, which is huge, on top of having 1% heal on every single enemy killed, and that is just passively, so you can use another Aura on top of that.

The passive effects of the new auras are already better than the combined effects of the old auras, and that's before you actually choose an aura to use in battle.

The short cooldowns mean you can switch between auras at will to match the situation too, and as seen in the video above, they are cast instantly and don't pin you to the ground like they used to.