It bothers me because it's a talent with a drawback. I understand Blizzard's designers think mages are ridiculously awesome, but it feels wrong to go about a nerf in this way.
Look, chain lightning is not this end-all-be-all DPS spell. It has a huge mana cost and a 6 second cooldown. It's a situational spell. You aren't going to see a shaman standing around chain casting CL.
Neither CL or LB is anywhere near as powerful as frostbolt or fireball simply because of all the extras that mages get. It may be more DPS on paper under certain circumstances but shaman elemental DPS in raids simply pales in comparison to a mage or warlock.
That being said, I wouldn't expect to see corresponding talents in other class trees to stay the way they are for very long. That's a pretty hefty nerf.
Originally Posted by CheshireCat
Eh, my nostalgia goggles aren't as good as they used to be.
if the point of the nerf was to nerf mage damage in raids applying the same nerf to the similar talents would be severely conuterproductive - Raid damage is relative, after all.
It should go without saying that it's impossible to understand how they figure Mages do more damage than other classes, and I would expect Shadow Priests and Warlocks to outdamage Mages with these changes.
That said, if they want to nerf Mage raid dps, I fail to understand why they would nerf the Improved talents. Instead, they could remove Playing with Fire and tone down Pyromaniac, for example. Deep Fire Mages already spend an absurd amount of talent points on 1% benefit per point talents that frankly suck. Take some of that out, replace them with random utility/interesting talents, or don't replace them at all.
It'd be a little more work, but the result would be far more palatable imo. And I frankly do not understand nerfing Frostbolt even more than Fireball. Are the devs not aware that Frost is a joke for PvE dps? That it isn't remotely competitive with ANY dps class at all? No serious PvE player would ever spec Frost, and this will just make that even more true.
<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl
This seems skeptical the way they are adjusting a mage's dps. However it's also a sigh of relief for rogues at the same time. Rogues have been looking for feedback for a while now on their true class raiding role. Most of are abilities on bosses are useless (stuns,crippling poison, blind etc.). So we are left with pure dps on boss fights and if mages are blowing us away in that regards what's the point of bringing a rogue?
So I'm not excited that mages are being nerfed through spell coefficient damage, but I really wish blizzard would continue to adjust rogues so that they would be on par or even greater in regards to single target dps.
Blizzard's general view on mage abilities seems to be that we must have drawbacks on most abilities. Talking about new spells, new talents and now the newly changed talents we're getting negative effects across the board.
I'm now 68 with my mage and quite frankly I'm not seeing any "zomg damage", actually I'm losing to an equally-geared lock (aff. spec) by quite a margin in 5-man-instance's bosses and that worries me. I would really like to be useful in lvl70 raiding because to me there is no other end game. There is only raiding and maybe leveling alts when my main is again in the point where there's nothing to achieve outside raids.
I think this is very elegant way of nerfing mage dps. It seems clear to me that blizzard wanted to achieve 2 things:
- Nerf arcane builds and force arcane mages to use arcane nukes more
- Nerf overall mage damage
To achieve this they could nerf multiply talents in all trees (and tbh its not that clear what to nerf in this case) or make like they did . Even in this state, every mage will take improved frostbolt/fireball and face nerf
speaking of which I am surprised to see no warrior buffs. I am an even handed type guy and have taken the good with the bad in regards to my class and right now our class needs a lot of help, more than ever except around release.
Are you joking? Even as I watch my critrate dwindle, I'm still able to keep all my self buffs up while grinding. I have no problems tanking the multipulls I heard so much whining about from beta testers. Honestly, where do we need help? I don't see it.
Maybe take pummel off the global cooldown...
The arguement is you can pummel independantly of autoswing. I never found having pummel on the GCD a problem ever on my warrior, where as CS is like a different ability on the GCD.
To be honest i'm miffed at these changes, if you include pet DPS (as you of course would) my demononlogy warlock friend outdamages me every time in 5 mans. This is with us having almost identical gear (TBC levelling). This is especially bizarre change for frost. I've also found myself having to work hard to outdamage shadowpriests (me as full fire). Hey maybe it's because i'm not 70 yet or because I suck, I don't know.
I would like to see Empowered frostbolt and fireball raised by 5% damage each to offset this though, it's like de ja vu with warriors. Here's a huge rage nerf you can offset it partially by speccing 41 arms!
- Nerf arcane builds and force arcane mages to use arcane nukes more
- Nerf overall mage damage
They failed a bit if the goal was to nerf arcane spec.
And arcane could use a nerf, but thats another topic.
And hopefully, if they are serious about this change, they will buff empowered talents to 20% again.
Then it would be a relative nerf to arcane, forcing us to go deep frost or fire for the big upgrades.
Ofc, it the goal was to nerf mage dmg this probably wont happen, but damn, so many ways to nerf dmg output, and they choose this one (which is hitting quite unfair anyway)?
Also, I surely didnt had the impression that deep frost was "owning" all other classes in dps in lvl 70 raiding, but maybe Im wrong.
In the end this is nearly worst for frost mages, at least fire can try out some scorch spam builds instead (or arcane, sigh).
To make it even worse for frost, all mages now get a shield that can absorb spell dmg, though it cost much more mana of course.
Disregarding the question wether mages arent or are doing too much damage, let's assume they are and it needs to be toned down. As a Dev, how would've you gone about it yourself, if nerfing those t1 talents wasnt the proper way of doing it?
Disregarding the question wether mages arent or are doing too much damage, let's assume they are and it needs to be toned down. As a Dev, how would've you gone about it yourself, if nerfing those t1 talents wasnt the proper way of doing it?
Edit: Spelling owns me.
Since it's ostensibly a comperative argument (we want rogues top dps, mages second, switch those roles NOW) I'd buff rogues. Just like the druid/warrior tanking thing. Nerf druids? Hell, no, buff warriors. But they nerfed. And not only nerfed but nerfed in a way that just makes absolutely no sense to me. As someone above said, if they do this buff the empowered X spells a little.
Anything I could write is going to sound like a whine so I won't but I'll admit to some extreme irritation by that change.
Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork
What other classes at the moment have talents that actually decrease their dmg? I know rogues used to with imp rupture (sort of,) but that was taken out? Havn't really been looking into rogue talents for a while now.
Since it's ostensibly a comperative argument (we want rogues top dps, mages second, switch those roles NOW) I'd buff rogues.
It's not a simple comparative argument. If you buff Rogues, you manipulate more than just Mage vs Rogue. You're changing PvP dynamics, the balance of dps-based boss fights, and many other things. I'd hope (and think) Blizzard has a projected DPS value (both their base and their scale factors) for each class and things outside the normal mean something needs to be tuned back. Apparently Rogues are fine according to Blizzard.
Just like the druid/warrior tanking thing. Nerf druids? Hell, no, buff warriors. But they nerfed. And not only nerfed but nerfed in a way that just makes absolutely no sense to me. As someone above said, if they do this buff the empowered X spells a little.
If the purpose of a change is to nerf something, you don't counter it with a buff.
Back to "was it the right nerf":
No, I don't think it was. Elemental Precision made sense - the instant I saw it, I thought "too good for Tier 1". The Improved Fireball/Frostbolt talents, though, looked to me like Improved SS / Improved BS: if you want to use them to any decent affect, you had to have the talent. Also, the very first time I looked at the mage TBC talents, I thought "too many % talents in Fire". Someone earlier bemoaned having "so many crappy 1% talents", not seeming to realize that the only reason they thought of 1% as "crappy" was because Mages already had an incredible amount of 2% talents.
There's just too many stacking, scaling talents in Fire. The Improved Fireball nerf should never have been necessary, because they shouldn't have gotten that many talents in the first place.
Before you start to drift, and your soul begins to scream.
I just wanted to tell you, that you're listening to a dream.
That doesn't quite justify the nerf to frostbolt though, since frostbolt only gets 2 talents that increases its dmg, and one that increases crit with a debuff.
I dig what you're saying and I thought about the ramifications for wider balancing with a rogue buff right after I posted. It's just... meh. The whole thing is just horribly average. I got to 70 in beta, not quite 67 now and it's still fun to play. I just don't know what the heck they're doing. A million percentage talents with little utility in the fire tree so, yes, they have to do something. I agree with that. It's just another in a long line of give with one hand, take away with the other development strategies for the class. The problem is that in this case it just feels really heavy handed.
Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork
When something is overpowered you don't fix it by buffing other classes, thats simply a design nightmare. If mages were doing too much DPS the proper fix is to nerf them. Seemed like a strange way to do it but oh well.
It all comes down to seeing what happens at 70, and this is a point I've had to harp on for my fellow shadow priests as well.
At the moment, everything seems exactly one way. X dps class is HERE, Y dps class is HERE. What we seem to be forgetting is that blizzard has already acknowledged they give different stats between leveling gear stats and PvP gear stats and raiding gear stats (this to the priests about the spirit concern during beta). When you look at it from the gear point of Pre-T4 leveling gear and partial T4, you're not looking at the same part of the elephant as the developers who are looking at it from "What is the END POINT of gearing for these classes"
I'm talking your BWL, AQ40, and Naxx- not Molten core and UBRS.
For the shadow priests the issue is simple, we are tuned with respect to the strongest point we will reach before the next expansion. We may not see that point any time in the next 6 months, but we are tuned accordingly. 6 months down the line 1300+dmg may be a reasonable number for a fully raid geared shadow priest and as such they have to take care that we don't dissolve in a pure pool of infinite mana 8 months down the line when we're fully tricked out in T6. They're nerfing us in stratholme to keep us from being gods in Naxx.
For the mages it's much more a matter of degrees. Right now mages may or may not be on the top of the totem pole for damage, but we're in Hellfire and the devs are balancing the Black Temple. Mages were clear winners in Naxx with fire specs and rolling ignites when that spec was taboo in MC/BWL (Yes I know the resistance reasons as my primary alt is a fire mage who was only ever able to raid those instances). Depending on what gear becomes available and what the boss fights look like (remember MC/BWL threw theorycrafting out the window for fire!), mages very well may be extreme dps at the top end.
All in all, it's a curious nerf. Had I been the one to change things I probably would have coded a hard scaling nerf ala Mindflay/SWP/Corruption since they already seem to be willing to break conventions in that fashion and it still allows the same degree of upward scaling through talents that was available previously and allows the talent trees to remain as viable (or not) as they were.
Because they didn't, after they've already demonstrated their willingness too, I suspect that part of the solution was also to make the arcane tree and it's associated primary spells a stronger alternative in comparison. I'm thinking that they probably want arcane primary to 40 or even 41 to be considered a reasonable spec because you're not giving up the super scaling of frostbolt/firebolt. Whether that's actually the case or not- we'll see down the line. I'm just trying to think how they think.
Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news.
Bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men.
Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts. BSG Quick Reference
I'm still not convinced that arcane blast/missles are a viable raid nuke though. It's just so much mana being tossed out. Even interspersing it with other stuff it doesn't seem viable and it most certainly doesn't feel "organic" to me.
I've softened my stance on it a bit after further thought (though it may push me to the shammy finally; someone needs to and I can act like I'm REALLY pissed off about it) but I agree with Bekah that this just seems like a really weird way to do it.
Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork
My Arcane Shots are currently critting for well over 2k (on plate since it ignores armor)
You have over 3000 ranged attack power? Impressive. With 3k RAP, an arcane crit would deal 1980 damage counting ranged weapon spec.
My average crit is more like 1700, I believe, but I have very often seen 2k+ numbers with rapid killing and such. With my AP heavy gear I'm at around 2300 AP, I believe, and yes, I can get around 3k with Jom Gabbar.
Ah. So with the best possible gear in the game, having just killed something for a 20% damage boost, and popping a cooldown, you do less damage on a crit than a mage with POM pyroblast.
Ah. So with the best possible gear in the game, having just killed something for a 20% damage boost, and popping a cooldown, you do less damage on a crit than a mage with POM pyroblast.
Yeah, that's overpowered and needed nerfed.
I have far from the best possible gear in the game now (since the expansion came out this week and all), and my arcane shots using zero cooldowns, zero buffs, crit for 1700+ damage consistantly, instantly, and it ignores armor. Yes, that needed nerfed, and I'm not being sarcastic.
The mage nerf makes me sad. I've just gotten my mage to the point where her Frostbolts hit for ~1k, and I don't really enjoy grinding with Fire.
* Pet icons will now properly update in the Stables window.Improved the robustness of the pet action bar display. It is now less likely to be accidentally blocked by addons.
This makes me happy, however. My hunter has several pets in stables, and I kept getting the wrong one out :o And maybe things will stop randomly breaking the pet action bar...
Originally Posted by #elitistjerks
(Blackpatch) interesting
(Blackpatch) the theoretical weekly profit of hypersynaptic fibers in ISK is only 0.004% off of the speed of light in meters per second
(@ZYla) dammit steam
(@ZYla) i already own all these gays
01/21/07, 2:10 AM
