If you’ve spent time playing MagDen in pvp, you’ve learned that Deep Fissure is your only competitive damage skill. You simply cannot bring a decent opponent down with spammables or fetcherflies or any of the frost/winter class abilities.

You have also learned that MagDen has the slowest offensive skills of any class. No one uses cliff racer because it is too slow and obvious to hit a good player. You might catch someone who isn’t looking at you with one cliff racer. On a good player that is all you will get. This is why adding damage to cliff racer does not make it a more effective skill in PVP. They needed to make it faster and less predictable. Otherwise, you simply can’t hit anyone with it. No matter the increased damage.

Another conspicuously slow skill that struggles in PVP is bird of prey. The animation at the beginning of the spell literally slows you down for a solid second or two before the speedbuff kicks in. The added snare immunity with U35 is great and a welcome addition. But it would have been better and more effective if they had simply speeded up the skill so that you could get a speed buff when you need it.

In addition to lower damage than other classes, slow, clunky skills are MagDen’s primary obstacle in PVP.

So what did they do to the class with the slowest skills? Push out its only effective damage skill to nine seconds. Nine seconds that must be spent concentrating and actively lining up the delayed burst against a good opponent who is fast, roll dodging, or simply knocking the crap out of you with three molten whips and then spamming whirling blades while you wait nine seconds for your only potent damage skill to go off, and possibly miss.

I guess I am still kind of shocked to learn that the person making these decisions clearly has never played MagDen in PVP. Like, not even once. It’s pretty disappointing. It’s such a beautiful game world, with such potential.