After looking at the mage talent preview I get the feeling (or maybe its just wishful thinking) that the currently presented talents are more concepts than actually balanced out abilities. Many of them are very cool ideas but just flat out weak. Like how empowered fireball is worse than fire power in every aspect while still being a lot harder to obtain.

This clearly goes against what Blizzard stated many times, namely that the new talents would be so good that only a fool would pass them up. So I am wondering how much thought went in the actual numbers of the talents as opposed to the concepts and mechanics. Anyone with more experience with MMORPG betas care to take a guess?

All of the numbers are subject to change obviously, and you can expect talents to be moved around, or made weaker or stronger before it goes live.

For this specific case it's also quite likely that they thought mages did plenty of damage as it is such that giving them another 5 point talent as powerful as fire power would be too much.

The talents changed quietly the second day they were posted. Obviously they're all subject to change.

I can see the concern behind having too many percentage modifier talents. But that is no excuse for having a 35 point talent that has the fraction of the power of a 25 point talent while almost completely overlapping in functionality.

If that is such a concern, don't have the talent. Put something cool in it's place.

I know the final numbers will be tweaked. That goes without saying. I am just wondering if the current talents are balanced at all, or if it is juse the designers throwing some ideas at the wall to see what sticks. Because if the power level of the current talents is already something that underwent an extensive review process and is close to the final cut then I am thoroughly underwhelmed.

yeah, i'd honestly say that these initial talent releases were just to give people some idea of where the devs were going, and give them a chance to add any insight / objections. Just look at warriors and there complaining about moving tactical mastery.

The deep mage talents sort of suck in general except for maybe one or two in deep Arcane so I wouldn't be surprised if things were different by release.

How could you seriously be underwhelmed by a 30% damage ranged execute or a talent that procs 50% increased movement speed and clears movement imparing effects? My jaw dropped when I thought about that functionality.

Yes but those talents are not the same. Fire power and critical mass are about the same in power and about the same in cost. Fire power being slightly deeper down is probably due to the fact that you can put 5 points into it vs 3, and also at high levels of crit, each additional point in crit offers less of a gain percentage wise. Improved fireball is a completely different talent. It only affects one spell and it also adds a cost (more mana since more casts). As such it being more powerful for that one spell is fine too.

That is how all talents are currently. There are some talents that suck, but there are no 2 talents that do the exact same things with the talent deeper down being worse. Incinerate is worse than critical mass but it is also lower tier. And that is how it should be.

However, that (good) design is being broken in TBC. Playing with fire, burnout and empowered fireball/frostbolt are all significantly weaker than the existing talents in those trees while also being very deep down the tree. That is *not* good design. So in terms of overall design, the currently proposed TBC trees are significantly worse than the 1.12 mage trees. Arcane is the exception, but without a crit ungimper and a cost reducer it will still struggle to be viable as main nuke tree.

This has nothing to do with power. Yes, fire mages will be very powerful with the new talents because while not very good they still add up. But the talents still stink. If you cannot make a 35 point talent more powerful than its almost identical 25 point counterpart, then don't do the talent at all. Put something else in there. Something that gets me excited. Something that does not make me want to spec 31/30.

Molten fury adds 6% overall damage for 3 points (a bit more if you save your cooldowns for the 20% range). Nice but only really good on enraging bosses. It is also the absolute best of the new talents.

Blazing speed will probably be not very useful in PvE and I am always reluctant to rely on procs for PvP. But it is still a good talent, I agree.

But that is where it ends. You took the 2 decent talents, but ignored the heap of crappy ones. All new talents need to be good. I can live with fillers like wand spec that are low on the tree and don't hurt anyone. But for 35 prerequisite points I demand quality. If I end up speccing 31/30 or 33/28 Blizzard has failed in my book.

EDIT: Let me make that statement a little stronger. If on release day I do not run out and immediately put 41 points into one tree (and keep them there after the initial curisity wore off) then Blizzard has failed. Not just by my standards but by their own, judging by how much they hyped the new talents.

I am right now experimenting with a 44 - yes 44 - points in fire spec. If I spend less points in the expansion that would be sad.

The Water Elemental thus far has no ability similar to Phase Shift. Think about why most Warlocks use imps during raids even when not in the MT group. Our little elemental buddy isn't going to last 30 seconds in many encounters.

In regards to the rogue abilties, I sure hope they are subject to changes or total deletion. I think the point of the lengthened trees and final talents is to make you choose either UberAbility01 or take the chance to finally put together that 31/30 talent build that would have made you overpowered pre-expansion. As of right now, I just don't see any rogues picking up anything but possibly Mutilate with some minor tweaks, the other abilities are just plain trash. And as some of the smarter rogue posters have shown the 41 Combat talent actually lowers prospective DPS. The Subtlety tree brings up the rear with a 90% resist 4 second magic shield on a 2 minute cooldown, which I need not explain how underdesired it is amongst the community.

Water elemental is a ranged dps class. Yes, there are a few encounters where he would die quickly (Vael, Sapp) due to AE damage, but most encounters don't have consist AE damage.

To counter the random damage, you could run out of range of the bad guy and bandaid him to keep him up to keep up in slash damage encounters.

It is the PvP tree, so I feel the 41 pointer is good towards that end.

The purpose of a ranged dps pet is to increase my dps. If I'm bandaging my pet my dps is significantly lowered. Seems to defeat the purpose really.

The following are all encounters where he would likely die if dpsing:
Lucifron
Magmadar
Gehennas
Shazzrah
Baron Geddon
Major Domo
Ragnaros
Vaelastrasz
Broodlord
Firemaw
Flamegor
Chromaggus
Nefarian
Skeram
Bug Family
Sartura (poor little guy never had a chance)
Ouro
Anubrekhan (depends on waterbolt range)
Grand Widow Faerlina
Maexxna
Heigan
Grobbulus (depends where people shit)
Loatheb

After compiling that list I feel somewhat sorry for hunters...

Or the healers could not suck and toss a renew/rejuve on it. (Obviously not possible always - but frequently, very doable - always interesting to see how # of shards spent on warlock pets changes based on the group the lock is in)

Exactly. They have not been able to make pet DPS viable in this game. Why would our pet be the exception? We don't even have talents to beef it up.

It depends mostly on three factors:
1) HP: Imps have barely any HP, same with a Succubus. I doubt this will be any different.
2) Range: Can I OOR most Aoes?
3) AI: Is it smart enough to follow me closely?

Also, keep in mind if I have to dick around enough to micromanage my little elemental just to keep him from dying then I'm probably wasting time I could have better spent dpsing anyhow. I shouldn't need to be a babysitter to make a 41 point talent usable in a raid. In all the situations above I assumed it was basically an imp without phase shift. So low hp, 30 yard range, a bit stupid about moving, etc.

Yah, in Naxx that guy in SOL, except for Patch. MC (save Rag) and BWL (save Vael) it should be fine, assuming you know how to tell it to run away.

Besides Frostbolt, I would think Blizzard would give the little Elemental more abilities to help it live, such as Ice Block (same as Mage ability), Consume frost power (use mana to convert to health, similar to VW ablity), and its group buff (maybe spirit). I picked four due to how many hunter pets have.

Edit: I assume he will have 3.5 HP at 60 scalable as he levels to 70. The pet AI isn't that great, but you can macro the commands to have one macro say attack target, come back to me then follow, and assist my target all in one button.

I now have an irrational desire to have a little pet iceblock whenever I do.

1) If it has Imp HP - then it can't get hit and it will be very hard to use on a lot of fights. My assumption is they want it to NOT suck, so they will give it Hunter pet/felhunter/Voidwalker levels of HP (if it has no CC, this makes sense to me).
2) I'd expect it to have at least a 30 yard range - and more likely a 36 yard range (to match the player). Even at 30 yards there are many fights where pulling it in/out will be sufficient.
3) It doesn't matter that much on most fights - your DPS consists of mash the frostbolt key - the pet is something that should be possible to micro while mashing FB.

Good thing you don't play a Hunter eh? Too bad you can use pets on plenty of those fights.

Let's skip the boring farm content and focus on Naxx:

Anub'rekhan - Pet survives for a pretty long time even taking impales.

Faerlina - Pet can survive if you're paying attention and pull it out of Rain of Fire.

Maexxna - We use PoH, so the pet usually survives well into the fight.

Grobbulus - If the pet is right next to you, I see no problem at all with this.

Loatheb - Pet would still do decent damage before the second Inevitable Doom.

You need to go look at the assumptions I made above, they answer all of these situations. Most of your answers here still involve the Elemental taking damage, which if it's anything like an imp is something it just cannot afford to do.