Theres a lot of nice changes in here. It shows they are actively thinking about the mage class and the pretty much do manage to change most things we were mentioning before this talent tree was revealed. But theres still some stuff I dont understand the reasoning behind.
Focus Magic is one of the things I really really like. It does need to have some scaling tho, 1000 mana for 7500 damage isnt to impressive. But as long as it ends up dealing good damage compared to its manacost thats the only thing that matters, even if its a total manadrain and you cant sustain it all the time, in fact the less sustainable it is the better that makes it. Heres how I think about the spell:
* If it deals a good total amount of damage for its cost and is designed so it always lasts the full minute before other things deplete it then what we get is basicly a dot like curse of agony or something like that. Long duration, good for damage but it needs a long time to take effect and be worth casting. So mages basicly get a good dot, (possible that other classes get the aggro for it even)
* If it deals a good total amount of damage for the mana invested but runs out in 10-15 secconds and you cant sustain it, well then we get a super dot that gains awesome scaling with everyones total haste. This would be even more awesome since you could simply cast it as much as you´r mana can sustain it and raidleaders will want to give you good group support since the mage with FM increases everyones damage by lots if you just feed him mana. This concept would simply be the first time I hear of a burst dot. The shorter a fight is the more powerfull this alternative would get. Additionally if one mage cant support it 100% of the time for a 25 man raid then this is exelent reason to bring more than one mage. Bring many and get moar boost to total magic damage done.
In the end the most important thing with FM is what return in damage you get for your invested mana, byond that the shorter possible duration before charges are all spent the better. Since this spell will be atainable at lv 20 we can also asume theres a version htats much cheaper than 1000 mana and that will be a pvp goodie to ptotect slow and sheep. Its the new detect magic to fake debuff people and paired up with arcane subtlety both sheep and slow will become a lot more powerfull. This is a sidenote but winters chill+arcane subtlety will make for really really dispell resistant sheeps.
Missile barrage: I really dont get that change. Its nice that they decided to let AB proc it but the change to AB stacking along with the removal of ABar procing MBar I still see trouble with the casting cycle. Now you get a really weird situation if you try to weave AB and ABar you cant stack up AB and the zero stacked spell deals very meh damage, the old model of using fire or frost bolts + ABar also has a heavily reduced proc chance. I thought that for TBC they wanted us to mix AB casts with other spells and that they would try to redesign things to make that happen in WotLK, but in the current state the only thing you can cast not to let the AB stack fall off is another AB and if full AB spam wasnt inteded for TBC it can hardly be intended for WotLK. So that leaves AB as a spell thats either zero stacked or fully spammed. Also it feels very odd not to let ABar and MB interact with eachother at all. Tbh Im getting sceptical to how usefull 2,5 sec AMs will even be, offcourse that depends a lot on how AM is scaled up for lv 80 and how it scales with gear, but its 6 talent points you invest (or should it perhaps be considered 11 now that even a MB proc is a lot more sensitive to get canceled by some random raid damage). 6/11 points just seems like a lot to invest in your seccond main nuke if it doesnt cooperate at all with the first main nuke you have gone to the top of your tree to get.
Arcane potency & Arcane Flows: Both of these are shaping upp really really nice. More PoMs, more PoM crits, AP in sync with 2 min trinkets. Very nice stuff that feels in line with what arcane should be and that work together. But Im 100% convinced that they wont let us fiddle around with a permanent 30% crit on AM and instants. That just couldnt be designed in a good way. It would be completely over powered to let us do that and it it didnt lead to overpowered damage it would mean that AM and ABar are abysmally poor damagedealers unless you get the permanent 30% crit on them. The seccond scenario would also ruin PoM for us since you would haveto keep it up at all times to deal competetive damage and would deal crap damage for 2 min every time you had to cast something else than AM or instants. I just hope that its solved in a good way. Maby making PoM a 10 seccond buff would be a viable option since that would still let you go a little bit pew pew with AM before using the PoM buff to get an instant pyro or whatever you had in mind. A more boring option I guess would be to just make it not affect channeled or isntant casts.
Fire still has me sceptical, I really really love the changes theyve made, but like Lhivera says none of them seem to boost fire single target DPS in a sensible way exept for half a promise of a talent we might manage to abuse for some time before it gets nerfed. In total it looks like Fire is turning out to be the support tree you dip into for nice talents with other specs. These changes has made it almoust as prismatic as arcane wich is kind of a funny direction.
Personally I think they just arent done with what to do with fire mages. But we will haveto wait and see I guess. Nice stuff for PvP tho, my frost PvP mage will probably want to play around a bit with all trees in WotLK before settling on a favourite specc again.
Shattershield gone feels like a good change. It looked really expensive and makes much more sense as a talent empowering Ice Barrier to me. Im very curious to see what they will replace it with, perhaps an arcane spell. Perhaps an arcane spell that can proc MB that we will all love to weave into our rotations? But another nuke doenst feel to likely, something arcane could be the case tho since the other new spell we get is both a frost and a fire spell. But the fact that they have yet to design another new spell for us kinda makes me hope they still have a new go with the rougher polish brushes to go before our WotLK trees start to near their final shape.
Would a beta access mage PLEASE post a vid/image (preferably vid) of the graphic nerf to arcane barrage!
I loved the way it looked in the alpha, and I hear it was struck with the UGLY bat this latest revision. I want to see what the damage is so I can more effectively QQ and work toward making it look amazing again. Especially with how epic the DK spells look.
I believe Fiery Payback won't be that much of an exploiter as many seem, like mentioned above will be little like russian roulette and I don't think healers will be pleased having players with rather poor hp and damage reduction stay at that low range. And using it encounter based(when relatively safe to stay at <35%) would rather be of an challenge and nice play style change for deep fire mages. Yet overpowered it is way to early to say, think we will find out on proper PvE situations. As for the pvp part of it, only op part I can see can be the 20% melee damage reduction, but still to be tested ofc.
Still according to Rows calculations it seems that fire isn't going for single target(read competitive single target dps). But looking at the builds I have hard time seeing all aspects of deep fire mage there. The way I see the talents, one will require to put 53 points in fire to boosts fireball dps to he maximum (well 51 tbh, if you don't count FP). Well, so I not to confuse to much, is it so that fireball scaling is way behind other trees?
Fireball DPS is going to be maxed out with a 33/38/0 spec, not deep fire. Deep fire would be used only for extra AoE and maybe some gimmick encounters & PvP, not much else.
I think they should remove the 10% arcane damage from imp scorch and tack that damage increase onto one of the arcane talents. Preferably something like imp arcane missiles, perhaps moving it up a tier or 2 to compensate, it would still be worth 5 points for having the debuff stay within the arcane tree and not having to waste 18 points into fire to gain the arcane damage buff.
THIS, would truly make arcane a standalone tree. Would make using arcane missiles on a proc desirable even IF you lost the AB damage bonus for a time as you would at least be refreshing the 10% arcane damage bonus. Or it could be a debuff attached to arcane barrage, that would be fine too if people did not want to have to wait 5s (less with the haste) to reapply the debuff in certain situations.
Likewise, I would like to see the 10% bonus frost damage removed from imp scorch, I despise the idea of wasting so many points in fire to gain a core damage buff for an alternate tree. It could be placed on brain freeze instead, while perhaps adding the secondary effect of spell pushback. Make sure that fingers of frost would be a self buff for 10s to treat every cast within that window as if it were frozen, not just the next cast, and I think frost would be in good shape.
As for fire, someone else come up with polish, I hate the spec.
I think they should remove the 10% arcane damage from imp scorch and tack that damage increase onto one of the arcane talents. Preferably something like imp arcane missiles, perhaps moving it up a tier or 2 to compensate, it would still be worth 5 points for having the debuff stay within the arcane tree and not having to waste 18 points into fire to gain the arcane damage buff.
THIS, would truly make arcane a standalone tree. Would make using arcane missiles on a proc desirable even IF you lost the AB damage bonus for a time as you would at least be refreshing the 10% arcane damage bonus. Or it could be a debuff attached to arcane barrage, that would be fine too if people did not want to have to wait 5s (less with the haste) to reapply the debuff in certain situations.
Likewise, I would like to see the 10% bonus frost damage removed from imp scorch, I despise the idea of wasting so many points in fire to gain a core damage buff for an alternate tree. It could be placed on brain freeze instead, while perhaps adding the secondary effect of spell pushback. Make sure that fingers of frost would be a self buff for 10s to treat every cast within that window as if it were frozen, not just the next cast, and I think frost would be in good shape.
As for fire, someone else come up with polish, I hate the spec.
I agree. As it stands now, it looks as though both Focus Magic and Imp. Scorch are going to be required in raiding, forcing 11/18/0 as the baseline spec for all raiding mages. As others have pointed out, Blizzard generally tries to avoid this kind of enforced spec'ing as can be seen by making Evocation trainable.
More changes are inc imo... especially to the fire tree.
I agree. As it stands now, it looks as though both Focus Magic and Imp. Scorch are going to be required in raiding, forcing 11/18/0 as the baseline spec for all raiding mages. As others have pointed out, Blizzard generally tries to avoid this kind of enforced spec'ing as can be seen by making Evocation trainable.
More changes are inc imo... especially to the fire tree.
11/18/0 can be the baseline spec for ONE raiding mage.
The way I see it, with the current build (obviously this will all change) you will have elementalist mages, and arcane mages, both having their given debuff and synergising together. Or, one mage 11/18/0 +whatever spec, and the rest whatever they like.
The only time it matters as a 'baseline' spec is for 5mans and 10mans, which personally i'm not too fussed by, and I doubt the encounters will be so difficult as to *necessitate* said talents.
I agree. As it stands now, it looks as though both Focus Magic and Imp. Scorch are going to be required in raiding, forcing 11/18/0 as the baseline spec for all raiding mages. As others have pointed out, Blizzard generally tries to avoid this kind of enforced spec'ing as can be seen by making Evocation trainable.
More changes are inc imo... especially to the fire tree.
Also this would promote bringing a more balanced trio of mages, an arcane mage for arcane damage that will help druids, a fire mage to help fire locks, and a frost mage to boost death knights. Very elegant in my view, and fire can get its 15% back possibly, unless it was nerfed to nerf locks primarily.
Removing the arcane damage modifier would hurt Moonkin. An arcane mage wouldn't be any more desired for a 10% arcane debuff than they would without one. Boosting Moonkin damage isn't utility enough to warrant a mage using the spec , but the fire/arcane/frost damage certainly is so you can be assured that there is always an Imp Scorch mage in the raid. Arcane would need a lot further utility to justify a raid slot.
I think they should remove the 10% arcane damage from imp scorch and tack that damage increase onto one of the arcane talents. Preferably something like imp arcane missiles, perhaps moving it up a tier or 2 to compensate, it would still be worth 5 points for having the debuff stay within the arcane tree and not having to waste 18 points into fire to gain the arcane damage buff.
THIS, would truly make arcane a standalone tree.
One thing the changes make clear is that Blizzard doesn't really want any standalone trees. They want each spec to perform at one particular level when solo, and at another particular level in a large group where synergy can come into play. If Arcane deals as much damage solo as it does in a group with a Fire Mage and Boomkin, then it's overpowered when solo or underpowered in the raid.
Make sure that fingers of frost would be a self buff for 10s to treat every cast within that window as if it were frozen, not just the next cast, and I think frost would be in good shape.
10 seconds of +50% crit would be pretty horrifically overpowered. I was thinking more like 3 seconds -- enough time to finish your current Frostbolt and follow up with either an Ice Lance or a Deep Freeze (for the damage, not the stun).
Question to testers: is Deep Freeze's damage applied to targets that cannot be stunned?
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
For me, the nicest thing about Focus Magic is it's intention: more raid synergy. Out of all the complaints Mages have in raiding situations, at their core is the question "why bring more than one mage?'. Focus Magic really helps this out. With 50 charges getting eaten away quickly, multiple mages spec'd into this will make sure it's up all the time. It's not perfect (obviously one mage could keep refreshing it), but it shows that Blizz at least recognizes this central raiding mage problem.
Now, if they would only make Master of Elements effect your party.... that'd be some true synergy. Or give us the Jaina Hyjal spirit aura... As it stands, outside of single target dps, synergy is still a concern.
Removing the arcane damage modifier would hurt Moonkin. I'd rather support my Moonkin brethren.
It would be kept, would just move the debuff from imp scorch to arcane missiles or arcane barrage instead, which I think would be preferred instead of having to spec 18 into fire just to get the debuff.
The point of not having to do so in a 25 man raid is valid if you have another mage perform the "bitch" spec role as someone else put it. The same could be said with the current fire builds and fire mages taking coldsnap at the cost of imp scorch, but all things being equal I would prefer being more autonomous in terms of buffing my own damage than the alternative.
I agree. As it stands now, it looks as though both Focus Magic and Imp. Scorch are going to be required in raiding, forcing 11/18/0 as the baseline spec for all raiding mages. As others have pointed out, Blizzard generally tries to avoid this kind of enforced spec'ing as can be seen by making Evocation trainable.
More changes are inc imo... especially to the fire tree.
Really, since most people will either be 33/38/0, or 0/18/53, I don't see an issue. Really, it promotes using multiple specs, just as a disc priest has a different type of healing than holy.
For PvP, 17/0/54 will definitely be the spec. FM and WC for protecting sheeps, 60% slow on frostbolt, 70% slow on CoC, many a shatter opportunity with deep freeze and shatter shield.
Has anyone even realised the power of a arc/frost leveling build? Get permafrost, chilled to the bone, full imp blizzard and frostbite. 65%slow + 10 from perma + 10 from chilled = 85% slow, with a 15% chance to freeze. That plus shatter and critting, AoE leveling is going to be amazing, and could actually be the best AoE in the game (even over Fire, range ftw). Combine with IV to really mess shit up.
One thing the changes make clear is that Blizzard doesn't really want any standalone trees. They want each spec to perform at one particular level when solo, and at another particular level in a large group where synergy can come into play. If Arcane deals as much damage solo as it does in a group with a Fire Mage and Boomkin, then it's overpowered when solo or underpowered in the raid.
True, but an arcane mage with 18 points in fire would have precisely the same raid damage buffs to himself as if he were allowed to achieve the same result within his own primary tree. The biggest difference is that he would be allowed to be a more rounded mage, ala the way 61 frost behaved in tbc, which was and still is my favorite all around spec.
Originally Posted by Lhivera
10 seconds of +50% crit would be pretty horrifically overpowered. I was thinking more like 3 seconds -- enough time to finish your current Frostbolt and follow up with either an Ice Lance or a Deep Freeze (for the damage, not the stun).
I am not so sure it would be so unreasonable. You could lessen the duration of the considered frozen buff, but even as a 10s self buff it would be similar to the old WG with two mages keeping the wg buffs with procs at 5s duration. And 2 mages with WG was seen as not too out of line, so why would having one mage with the same self buffed effect be so? It is true that frost got 10% more damage, but arcane was lifted in a similar fashion so it still seems in line.
If this would make frost out of line then the duration could and should be adjusted, but I think this would be perfect to keep it competitive, especially with the arcane buffs. It should still be less probably, but still in the ballpark of arcane in my view.
As for fire, again, someone else rework it to make it up to par.
For me, the nicest thing about Focus Magic is it's intention: more raid synergy. Out of all the complaints Mages have in raiding situations, at their core is the question "why bring more than one mage?'. Focus Magic really helps this out. With 50 charges getting eaten away quickly, multiple mages spec'd into this will make sure it's up all the time. It's not perfect (obviously one mage could keep refreshing it), but it shows that Blizz at least recognizes this central raiding mage problem.
Now, if they would only make Master of Elements effect your party.... that'd be some true synergy. Or give us the Jaina Hyjal spirit aura... As it stands, outside of single target dps, synergy is still a concern.
Yes that should make for a very fun class, who can spam the debuff that you don't get credit for faster... You have to be kidding me. Moreover, as has been said the debuff will be eaten in less than 20 seconds, perhaps as low as 10. This is a gimmick ability, no other class has to deal with such harsh mana cost coupled with being forced to spam the ability in order to get any kind of raid synergy.
Remove the 50 charges and keep it a one minute debuff, problem solved.
Really, since most people will either be 33/38/0, or 0/18/53, I don't see an issue. Really, it promotes using multiple specs, just as a disc priest has a different type of healing than holy.
For PvP, 17/0/54 will definitely be the spec. FM and WC for protecting sheeps, 60% slow on frostbolt, 70% slow on CoC, many a shatter opportunity with deep freeze and shatter shield.
Has anyone even realised the power of a arc/frost leveling build? Get permafrost, chilled to the bone, full imp blizzard and frostbite. 65%slow + 10 from perma + 10 from chilled = 85% slow, with a 15% chance to freeze. That plus shatter and critting, AoE leveling is going to be amazing, and could actually be the best AoE in the game (even over Fire, range ftw). Combine with IV to really mess shit up.
The fact that most people will be 33/38 for fire is what bugs me. Thats a hybrid spec, not a fire spec. Frostfire bolt was designed to make hybrid elementalist specs more viable from what we can tell so far.
I enjoy being a fire mage, and I want to be competitive in single target dps. Moreover, I want my primary tree to be sufficient in making me competitive. x/51/x should make me competitive, not being a hybrid that happens to use fire.
The end of the tree needs to be reworked give fire mages better single target dps instead of gimmicky AoE spells. Make the talents improve AoE spells as well as overall fire damage or fireball damage if Blizzard really wants fire to be the AoE spec.
This is all just my opinion, but figured its worth throwing my two cents in.
Jaina's Brilliance Aura would be real sweet for mages to have. "Focus Magic" sounds more of a gimmick. Given the high cost of maintaining it and the restrictions on mana potion usage, keeping this up doesn't seem reasonable -- unless we somehow end up having insane mana regen from other sources.
I'm liking how 0/18/53 is looking. You have the raid synergy from scorch for 10%, which also coincides with the instant cast fireballs you'll be getting every now and again. I'll be playing around with a few specs, but I'm almost 100% positive this will be the spec to go.
Jaina's Brilliance Aura would be real sweet for mages to have. "Focus Magic" sounds more of a gimmick. Given the high cost of maintaining it and the restrictions on mana potion usage, keeping this up doesn't seem reasonable -- unless we somehow end up having insane mana regen from other sources.
I don't think you'll see Brilliance Aura on mages at least till lvl 100, if ever. More likely it will be one of the major gimmicks of the mage hero class. Which I should point out is still a possibility for this expansion.
One thing the changes make clear is that Blizzard doesn't really want any standalone trees. They want each spec to perform at one particular level when solo, and at another particular level in a large group where synergy can come into play. If Arcane deals as much damage solo as it does in a group with a Fire Mage and Boomkin, then it's overpowered when solo or underpowered in the raid.
...snip...
While I agree that it appears that Blizzard is attempting to build more multi-tree synergies for the Mage class, they currently have a problem with the trees being too bloated to allow a viable multi-tree build, as when you start going into multiple trees you lose out on deep tree disciplines. The majority of the 11/21/31/41/51 talents are lackluster, and as such don't lend themselves to encouraging multi-tree synergies/builds.
I absolutely hate it when it's a no brainer to skip the 41/51 point talents even when you have more then the 41/51 points stacked into a specific tree. As an example with Dragon's Breath and Slow, they're both gimmicky items that have limited use, and almost every time I go into the trees I skip these talents because I find them not needed.
I do like that they've made a showing at changes to the class, and while I still need to withhold judgment until I can log into Beta, it almost looks like they simply threw a bunch of talents at the trees without any solid thought on the amount of points that each tree has, and how costly some of the new synergies will be to both your build, and in a raid.
Maybe I just rambled, but that is very similar input to what the majority of the rest of the mages in my guild think.
The fact that most people will be 33/38 for fire is what bugs me. Thats a hybrid spec, not a fire spec. Frostfire bolt was designed to make hybrid elementalist specs more viable from what we can tell so far.
I enjoy being a fire mage, and I want to be competitive in single target dps. Moreover, I want my primary tree to be sufficient in making me competitive. x/51/x should make me competitive, not being a hybrid that happens to use fire.
The end of the tree needs to be reworked give fire mages better single target dps instead of gimmicky AoE spells. Make the talents improve AoE spells as well as overall fire damage or fireball damage if Blizzard really wants fire to be the AoE spec.
This is all just my opinion, but figured its worth throwing my two cents in.
I do see your issue, nothing past 40 points in fire is really worth getting for raid boss DPS. One thing that I was playing around with was a 033/38 ish elemental build, designed around tossing FFB.
I think it harks back to the days pre-bc, where frost was the premier raiding build, and fire was for pvp. It is looking like blizz is trying to get back to that, with fire doing massive damage but being ridiculously squishy.
While I agree that it appears that Blizzard is attempting to build more multi-tree synergies for the Mage class, they currently have a problem with the trees being too bloated to allow a viable multi-tree build, as when you start going into multiple trees you lose out on deep tree disciplines. The majority of the 11/21/31/41/51 talents are lackluster, and as such don't lend themselves to encouraging multi-tree synergies/builds.
I absolutely hate it when it's a no brainer to skip the 41/51 point talents even when you have more then the 41/51 points stacked into a specific tree. As an example with Dragon's Breath and Slow, they're both gimmicky items that have limited use, and almost every time I go into the trees I skip these talents because I find them not needed.
I do like that they've made a showing at changes to the class, and while I still need to withhold judgment until I can log into Beta, it almost looks like they simply threw a bunch of talents at the trees without any solid thought on the amount of points that each tree has, and how costly some of the new synergies will be to both your build, and in a raid.
Maybe I just rambled, but that is very similar input to what the majority of the rest of the mages in my guild think.
It does seem like every tree is bloated. If I want to do both PvE and PvP with one spec, I would have to have probably 80 points (as frost, even 0/0/71 doesn't give me all the talents I want). Right now, a 18/0/43 spec is pretty good for frost, but with the addition of FoF/WG, shatter is required, so more points must be put into frost.
I guess it is nice that they are actually giving us worthwhile talents (if they changed frozen core to something worthwhile I don't know what I would take points away from), it really seems like you have a huge trade off between tree synergy.
07/29/08, 3:04 PM
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