Engineer Vs Magus (Base Analysis)

The two Sniper  like classes on Warhammer Online : Return of Reckoning.  During my gaming time on this game there was always the question which on is “better”. Although i believe there is no better in any class since they are all designed to do different things and not everything. Never the less i reached a point that i wanted to know if there are any significant differences between the classes. Here are some the results after a bit of testing. Most of the testing is on base, meaning, no gear, no renown, no builds or talents. On the result i will inticate what we testing how.

So the first thing we are going to look at is the statistics and differences. No gear, no renonw, no carrier points.

The Main stat for damge is the same at (221). Initiative for chance to recieve critial is the same (196). the main difference is that the engineer gets a slight woounds buff and the magus gets a wepon skill and will power buff in the stats. Thse small difference are not huge to cause a problem in the game but they are diferences. This results in the following:

Base Damage

Base damage, no gear, no renown, no weapons, no specializations. 10 auto attacks on target dammies. Target dummies have no armour, no ressistances.

No difference on DPS. Slght difference on the average damage, this happened due to a few critical hits more on the engineer. Both claases have the same change to do critical hit.

Base Damage + Weapons

Base damage, no gear, no renown, SC weapons, no specializations. 10 auto attacks on target dammies. Target dummies have no armour, no ressistances

On auto attacks with the same level weapons we see that the magus has a clear advantage on damage. Magus use melee attacks and having a 2 Handed weapon in melee range they output more damage. The Engineer is using single wepon for melee and single for ranged. On the auto attack the magus does alot mroe in melee rang, however he does not have a ranged auto attack giving him a disadvantage on long range DPS. How important this extra damage is , i can not tell, but damage is damage. Small not that this damage is physical.

Gun Blast Vs Flickering Red Fire

A test with 10 shots on dummies between those two skills. Engineer skill is Physical damage and Magus is Elemental. Dumies have no resistanses, no armor, no other stats.

It is clear tha the engineer is outputing MASSIVE damage to the dummies with this skill compared to the Magus. Much higher DPS and much Higher over 100% more total damage. For this reason the next test was done with the same setup on the constructs that have both sov armour & armor potions and magical resitances to see how that translates to a more “real” in fight conditions.

Gun Blast Vs Flickering Red Fire (constructs)

In a more “normal situataion where resistances and armor is involed, the engineer looses 495% of the damage he was doing on the dummies, while the magus only 127. Thsi gives the magus an advanage that he can hit armored and not armoured targets the same. The engineer is limited on “soft” target to get maximum damage. In other words dotn hit tanks or heavy armor targets.

Since these two classes also have an aoe specialisation i have a bried look a on of the skills to see how they do in that path same test as with Gun blast and Flickerign Red Fire.

Fire Bomb vs Rend Winds

These skills are both spell damage. The engineer is dealing more damage per shot but the magus get a massive difference in the DPS race. Rend winds attack 3 times per sec with less damage this leads to the incresed dps numbers. Depending on the situation both can be used very well.

Skill Difference

The magus some times feels like they can apply teh dots faster than the enginner. This is due to the animation of the characters and the two more facts. One is that the magus has an extra dot and second that the magus can cast 7 dots with 250 AP while the engineer can cast only 6 with the 250 AP availible.

PETS

From the table above i believe that the pets of the magus are better in alot fo aspecs. The only advantage i see on the engineer part is the gun turret, which deals alot fo damage and has burst. However the -5% critical damage debuff of the magus,  i cant tell if its better or not that the burst damage of the engineer pet. Both seem very good to me. Over all i think that the magus pets win the comparisson.

Conclusions

Despite the general belief that the engineer is much stronger and better, i have to say that frm the results above it seems that the magus has a clear advantage in many areas. They have differnt styles and uses. Also we need to take in account that Destro dont have as many ranged as Order thus it can be argued that they need to be stronger to compensate for the difference. The same can be held true for Order melle like the lion. The balance in the game is very hard for many reasons. One must see the “big” picture to say if somethings needs changes. The game is balanced on top gear with Warband gameplay in mid. Everythign else comes second. I hope the above basic comparison to give you a new perspective into the game and the classes.