Heidi

I see discussions raging on the new talent trees and abilities. I know I personally have wanted invisibility back for some time. Its just such a classic "mage-like" ability. No one here seems to be commenting at all on the fact that we've gotten it back. I was wondering what the take on it here is?

I'm pretty disappointed in it, even from an "is this fun" factor. I clearly understand the potential for overpowered-ness, especially in PvP, but if its not much of a fun ability, why even give it back to us? I can foresee, even in pvp, a few times when it would be useful as it is, but it seems like such a super-random limitation on this ability, clearly designed to prevent the mage ambush. I think the mage ambush is one of the key purposes of an invisibility spell... even with a cooldown on casting or something of a few seconds.

Any thoughts? Am I missing something? Do people even care?

 

Ultramax

Uh yeah you're missing something. They don't want mage ambush, so you aren't getting mage ambush therefore the limitations.

 

Nurru

It looks like an excellent ability for both escaping and also for setting up positioning.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Gonkish

I care. I remember mages in beta with invisibility. I do not ever, ever want to see the "mage ambush" thing come back again. I don't care how much any mage says they want it. It was a horribly overpowered bullshit capability. If it worked like it did in beta it would also neatly make rogues completely useless because it raped the everloving hell out of stealth.

That said the proposed implementation seems to be nice. It's a decent "oh crap I need to get out of here" skill. If it drops you out of combat, then mages might actually have to stop bitching (and I know how some of them love to bitch) about repair costs. Maybe. Honestly though it seems like it's just something that is useful for getting out of a nasty situation. Which is fine by me.

If they ever bring back invis->pyro one shot mages, though, I swear to god I will quit this game. Yes it was that stupidly overpowered.

Why Hunters suffer...
Benefactor's Bar learns you some goodness quicklike...

 

Falcon24

Having never personally experienced closed beta invis for myself, I think the spell itself is fine and will be very useful. Although I am not much for pvp.

 

OzX

I don't understand where your problem is? You seem to be saying...

"In order to be fun, invisibility should be overpowered. Otherwise, fuck it."

When I look at the situation, I would see the limitation being part of the fun. Something for players who like to find ways to make things work? Perhaps that's just a bad mix for Mage personalities who in my experience are min-maxers more than average? I've rarely seen mages who choose odd, possibly inefficient build for personal taste over pre-calculated "optimum" templates.

 

Heidi

Uh, just for full disclosure, I've never specced fire... never even had pyro. I wouldn't even if I had inviso. I'm 41 points in frost, currently. And I agree that inviso-pyro, especially in beta, was overpowered. Pyro and PoM have substantially changed since then. Pyro has the dot, PoM is less bump up, etc. I think everyone agrees the mage patch put them back where they ought to be, power-wise, and I never expect(ed) to one shot anyone from inviso and don't want to do so. It just seems like a very random limitation. I'd have preferred, for example, a cooldown (even a very long one) on casting while coming out of inviso, to this.

Also, I wasn't considering it as an escape ability. Somehow, in my mind it was out of combat only, since Vanish is pretty class-defining in my mind, but nothing indicates that yet. That does make it a bit more useful, yes. Keep discussing, if you care too.

 

Soul

It does raise a couple of questions:

1. What's with Greater/Lesser Invisibility? Are mages going to get Greater Invisibility at a higher level?

2. Note that a mage can't perform hostile actions while invisible... so does that mean I can mount up and run for the hills while invisible? Quaff pots/bandage? Buff the party? Summon or command pets to attack something?

 

Heidi

Like, 41 points in frost? Just because I like it that much?

I'm asking an honest question, and people seem to jump to the conclusion I want to pom pyro people out of inviso... sorry I wasn't clear, but thats not the point. I'd like, for example, to see everyone, while inviso, but trading that for, as suggested above, even a fairly long cooldown (10 seconds? 5 seconds?) when coming out of inviso. Then it'd be much more of a hide and run and show up somewhere unexpected without inviso-> pyro ability.

I think that'd be alot more fun, allowing a mage to pop out, knowing (or thinking) that there might be 10 pc's or npcs in this immediate area when I pop out of inviso, heck if I know! Here goes nothing!

 

Keltan

I see a lot of fun potential fights involving Invis.

You get to a boss and attempt him, but he has just insane hitpoint regen. During the wipe, one of your mages tries to dodge death by using Invis, and sees 2 "Astral Healers" chainhealing the boss. He attacks one and finds it only has 2k life, but another spawns 30 seconds later. Now you know that on your next attempt, you need 2 mages Invis in the Astral Plane to keep the "Invis healers" dead so that the rest of the raid can kill the bosses. Would be neat if there was a group version of the spell and encounters where your raid had to fight on multiple Planes of Reality at the same time, in "normal world" and "Invis land." (Similar to the "split the raid into two forces so that you can flip 2 levers at the ends of opposite tunnels within 30 seconds of each other to open a gate" type encounter.)

Edit: Sorry. Missed the whole "cannot perform hostile action while invis" thing. I guess change "killing astral healers" to "flip an invisible switch, open an invisible door, activate an invisible trap, etc."

 

Falcon24

That would have to be longer than a 30 second respawn given the 5 minute cooldown. But yeah, I see your point. New encounter mechanics are always good.

 

heel

The description on the site says:

"Fades the caster to invisibility over 8 sec. The effect is cancelled if you perform or receive any hostile actions. While invisible, you can only see other invisible targets and those whom can see invisible."

So . . . kind of dubious as an escape skill, and there certainly won't be any battling on the astral plane or whatever.

 

Xellotath

The description does say 8s, but if you look at the screenshot it shows 14s remaining. Maybe the description means it takes 8 seconds for you to become fully invisible, and it lasts some longer period of time?

Either that or it was changed after the SS was taken.

 

Impowitz

Official mage preview has no mention of invis. Looks like invis lovers are s.o.l. - for now.

 

Xellotath

Check again.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...ge/spells.html

 

Kasonic

As a Vanish, it's pretty powerful and cool.

As whatever the hell the 'fades over 8s' thing is, it sounds utterly useless.

PS: Anyone else think the female Blood Elf casting animation is fucking sweet?

 

heel

I think the duration is 20 (30?) seconds, according to the leak . . . but it makes it seem like it takes eight seconds before you completely fade out. Kind of rules it out as an escape mechanism for most situations in pvp, or for any pve encounter where you're already taking a beating.

 

altairian

I've NEVER understood this viewpoint. What exactly are rogues doing in stealth that's so freaking important that mages were also able to do while invisible? The only things I can think of are: stealth farming SM (because that was the shit at the time) and catching people with their pants down in pvp. I really don't see how 1 class having a similar ability makes an ENTIRE CLASS useless? It just sounds like pure jealousy to me, the only time that stealth is of use in groups is sapping (which in 5 mans if you're using sap, it means you need to and the fact that the mage can go invisible and polymorph something changes nothing), and the suppression room in BWL, which a mage won't be going invisible to drop suppression devices in.

The beta version of invisibility was overpowered in pvp, the proposed version with a 5(?) minute cooldown doesn't sound so bad, even if we were able to "mage ambush" with it.

 

◊ Nork

As a mage who is currently specced 10/31/10, I will say that there are off-spec mages out there. The problem is that most forums have trolls that don't respect non-optimal builds. Even these forums, which are very intolerant of trolling, are intimidating enough that people don't want to post about non-conformist builds without qualifying their posts with statements of their guild progression. I spent more time than I'd like to admit trying to decide if I should include my guild's status in my post in an attempt to justify a build with 10 points invested in each tree.

I also think people are missing one of the caveats of the new Invisibility spell - it limits our ability to target players, but that doesn't mean we can't attack them. Invisibility may combine well with Frost Nova or Dragonbreath to allow mages an opportunity to use crowd control on players that they can't see.

 

Tzeni

Well, they don't design abilities for what you personally would like to do. Given "invisibility ambush", a lot of mages would spec pyro and use it, even if you wouldn't.

 

Nurru

You missed the part where you can't take hostile action.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

◊ Nork

I should be able to cancel the invisibility (and any limitations included in the buff), and cast an instant cast spell before anyone around me could respond. I do this frequently with iceblock and frost nova/blink.

 

Xellotath

Yes you can. It just ends the spell. There is nothing in the description that says you can't do anything offensively, it just cancels the invisibility effect and you can only target other invisible/seeing invisible mobs/players.

 

Aphyrax

Unless it lasts a minute or more or drops aggro the new invisibility will be pretty much a novelty spell.

In the current setup, even the old invisibility would not be all that overpowered if it broke upon spell cast. So I can PoM-pyro out of invis? Big deal, I can already PoM-pyro, and since my spells have a 41 yard range the odds of you detecting me before I get in range are slim.

Rogues need stealth because they need to bridge the gap to the opponent. Mages don't have to do that and already have one of the highet ranges in the game. Hence proclaiming that invisibility is so overpowered does not have a lot of merit. Of course I could use invis to sneak up on an opponent, but why would a mage want to do that? Maybe against hunters and maybe to get a frost nova off immediately, but thats pretty much it.

Now, invisibility not breaking until the spell has actually finished casting, that would be massively overpowered as we all know. But given that pyro has a 6 second cast time and that PoM is just as effective without invisibility, all those "remember beta" cries are pretty much unfounded, especially considering that mages got their talents first and thus obviously destroyed everyone for a long time.

 

saramin

I don't really understand the griping, to be honest. As expected it's a pvp toy and as expected it's balanced around group play mechanics rather than "sheep vs. liquid fire" mechanics. I know as a druid used to dancing my way through battlegrounds with travel form while sniping heals, the idea of mages fading out before two teams meet at an AB node only to reappear anywhere within a 82-yard diameter scares the living hell out of me.

80% of pvp is just stats in conflict. Everything else is positioning.