There is one thing that a mage, warlock, rogue, or hunter can do better than any other hybrid class. We can dump meaningful threat. Cat druids have cower, which is a worse version of a rogue's feint and I don't know why it exists, but it hardly helps in in a threat sensitive situation. This means our DPS potential is greater on any fight with a limit on threat. During the early part of T6 raiding, this was readily apparent because tanks had worse TPS, but for DPS measuring fights like Brutallus, where your tank groups can be stacked for threat and such, we can see hybrids doing good DPS.

Currently both of our possible PvE armors scale with gear. 30% mana regen scales with your int and spirit. 3% crit scales with your +damage. The additional suggestion of giving our armor 30% spirit to damage also scales with our gear. Our armors are fine, except when you compare them to Fel Armor.

However, warlock armor seems to be purely designed to make spirit into a stat warlocks don't avoid. 30% spirit to damage and 30% mana regen while casting both scale linearly in power with spirit, but neither makes spirit a stat warlocks would want to stack.

I don't know why you guys think that crit is a non-scaling stat.

The whole point I was trying to make was give us a PvE armor that gives us:

1. 30% mana regen like Mage Armor
2. A damage boosting stat - spellpower, Crit% or rating, haste
3. An effect that turns a less desirable stat into a more desirable stat - spirit->dmg or similar

I will admit though, I was wrong for suggesting that crit was a non-scaling stat, but compared to +dmg it's horrible.

"I'm sorry but imma finish this easily, if you were a real mage, you wouldn't even need me to explain to you why these changes are needed. These aren't even buffs if u compare us to others. i'm just asking a couple of small things to equalize us. The only thing I agree with you on is the idea of mixing molten and mage armor together but I highly doubt it will happen. " Quote

WoW Forums -> Suggested Changes

The brilliance of the beta forums on display.

Crit scales with damage (and haste, and hit) just as well as damage scales with crit (and haste, and hit).

Since damage is likely to increase more between just-turned-level-80 and late raiding gear, crit actually scales better. Just look at how Brilliant Wizard Oil scales better than Superior Wizard Oil in TBC.

Just because crit *rating* is overpriced in item budget, does not mean that crit has any problems with scaling.

But +dmg is a non-scaling stat. 3.5 damage gives you a base 1 DPS on your spells. Then, crit adds some percent, resists takes some away, talents change the effective DPS of spells, etc. But +dmg and AP are both completely non-scaling stats. An untalented mage with 0% resists, 0% crit, 0% haste, etc. will see a 1 DPS gain on any spell they cast (unless the spell is penalized or whatever, like frostbolt) whenever they gain 3.5 +dmg. It doesn't matter if said mage has +3000 damage or +0 damage, they will gain 1 DPS. No other stat has the same effect. That's why we usually compare the other stats to +dmg, when trying to decide on gear.

As for spirit being useful or not, spirit is our only form of basic regen. Evocation and mana gems are extensions of our mana pool, but not actual regen. Warlocks have lifetap, so if their armor didn't give them +30% mana regen while casting, they would still have a way to regen mana. The same isn't true for us, so +30% mana regen while casting is more valuable for us than for warlocks. It would be very awkward if the TC'ing for AB spam said spirit was the best stat to stack for DPS, by a wide margin. Spirit might already be the best stat to stack for DPS if you plan to AB spam, so adding another benefit to it for us probably is a bad idea.

I don't think blizzard wants the stacking of any stat to be significantly better, either. So we aren't going to get much more that gives spirit better returns. The MM nerf was probably for the same reason. I'm pretty sure intellect was better than crit rating for DPS for arcane mages, not even counting the mana a point of intellect is worth, before the change.

I was referring to the damage boosting potential of each stat. Spell Power, as it's now called, is (considering the massive amounts of passive haste in Beta) the best investment (excluding hit till capped) in terms of item budget for all mage specs. Now for a while Intellect/Spirit were good for arcane mages, but usually you could use outside help to mitigate the mana regen loss. We should be taking a hard look at the benefit of Spirit to non-arcane specs. Considering the changes to potions and the possibility of 1 mana gem per fight. Spirit needs to be a better stat for any mage spec, outside of it's mana regen potential.

Edit: Oh, and -
Brilliant Wizzy Oil - 36 Spell Power + 16 crit rating
Superior Wizzy Oil - 42 Spell Power

16 Crit Rating > 6 Spell Power

Since the value of haste and the value of crit/hit are independent of each other, having a ton of haste on your gear doesn't mean spellpower is better than crit or hit. And hit could possibly not be the best stat to stack. Hit is always better given our current crit damage bonuses, but I think FFB actually gains more from crit than from hit if you have Ice Shards and Ignite and are fighting a non-fire immune mob, though a two roll system for spell calculations may make that untrue, not sure. Either way, it is close.

And why does spirit need to be better than just it's mana regen potential? If our outside mana regen is going to be more limited than it currently is, then spirit is getting buffed already. Over an 8 minute fight, we have an effective mana pool of 1.75*pool (or 2.23 if you have a resto shaman) + 1 mana potion + 4 mana gems. Since warlocks (and healers) get better returns from SP mana and healing, I don't think we can count on one. Ret Paladins, maybe; survival hunters, more likely than anything else; druids keeping rejuv on us, not likely. So, we may get back 2% of our mana back every 8-10 seconds. That's another 106% of our mana pool over the 8 minute fight. So, over the course of an 8 minute fight, every point of spirit from gear or buffs (SotM and Kings are already accounted for) gives you 86.4 mana. Comparatively, 1 point of intellect (Arcane Mind and Kings are already accounted for) gives you 63.7 mana. Considering that spirit also gives you .0726 damage per point (SotM and Kings are already accounted for) if you have Imp DS, I think spirit is a pretty good stat, without needing much more, for arcane at least.

For Fire and Frost, it might suck, though, but crit is better for them than for arcane, so there's some trade off.

I can see your points, and will wait and see for a bit. I just wish they would give some attention to way our armor spells work with each other like the Warlock's Fel Armor/Demon Armor change up.

This is best news since the change that made armors undispellable:

Regardless of their DPS impact, or lack thereof, our armors are most definitely not fine.

They are of schitzophrenic design - in one sense, each talent tree/school has its own armor which theoretically becomes stronger as a result of specialising in the given tree (Frost Armor gains increased melee slow debuff length, can proc Frostbite etc). This indicates that if you are e.g. deep frost then Frost Armor should be your strongest option, generally speaking.

However, in another sense, we have armors with PvE and PvP utility. Frost Armor is functionally useless for PvE except for gimmick encounters (i.e. for Bloodboil only, pretty much, in TBC raid content). You will either use Mage Armor (if you need the regen) or Molten Armor (if you don't) despite the fact that these armors are not improved at all by your talents. Now that all specs are intended to be raid- and pvp-viable, so too should all armors be.

I personally think that warlocks role-based armors are preferable to the school-based armors that mages are intended to have, but if Blizzard is going to continue with the school-based versions then the armor from your talented school should (generally, but by no means always) be your best choice, for both PvE and PvP.

A related reason for the ire concerning Fel Armor is how it effectively turns spirit from a low-value stat for warlocks (affecting Lifetap only) to a medium value one (regen while casting, increased spell damage), regardless of warlock spec.

For fire, frost, or elementalist-spec mages there are currently NO talents or abilities that make use of spirit, despite the fact that due to gear unification we can expect spirit to be present on most cloth gear. Spirit doesn't necessarily have to be made useful by altering Molten/Frost Armor, but it should be useful for these specs somehow, or else, like Affliction warlocks and Shadow priests currently, mages may fall behind as gear scales up.

It really would be nice if MoE was changed to "Returns 30% of the base mana cost of your fire and frost spells on critical hits, plus x% of your spirit." That would fix the issues with fire/frost/elementalist builds not getting much benefit from spirit and wouldn't make arcane imba with spirit. It would also further solidify the idea that arcane doesn't like crit.

The matter of mana regen shouldn't even be discussed at this stage because it's obvious Wrath talents and abilities are being designed around new mana dynamics which are not yet implemented on beta servers at this time. With the change to spell power and the glut of spirit on gear in beta presently it's obvious spirit is becoming a more important stat and I don't foresee them just leaving Mages out to dry in that respect. The sky isn't falling, it just isn't finished yet.

Now as for the armor discussion, combining Mage Armor and Molten Armor but dropping the -crit and giving it a side effect such as "Doubles the amount of damage taken by critical hits" might work for a more PvE specific armor. I think any of us would be hard pressed to come up with an instance where we weren't crit in PvE without being a goner anyway, but it would have serious PvP implications. It doesn't solve the problem of Molten Armor's +3% crit being lackluster, but combining it with the debuff duration and mana regeneration could help. It's better than looking at Warlocks and simply saying "unfair!" at the very least. But like I said earlier, it's too early to say we need/want 30% mana regeneration while casting in Wrath.

Do we really want one uber-armour that's always the best choice in every PvE situation?

I mean, obviously it would be shiny, but our damage would simply be tuned down so we do whatever DPS Blizz deems appropriate (call it equivalent to a CoDing warlock).

I very much suspect that Blizz thinks that the fact that mages have to make choices among their armours is a good thing. Now obvously non-arcane mages need some reason to like spirit if they're able to run molten armour and ice armour could use some kind of PvE use, but I very much doubt that rolling all the beneficial PvE effects of our armours into one is something Blizz is considering.

What choice has there been to make since BC's release? Molten Armor is the only sane option for non-Arcane.

Yes they have the option to.. just like we have the option to level an alt and play it while not raiding. Neither should effect the performance of our main in a raid situation. If once you are in combat as an enhancement shaman all you can effectively do is be a melee dps then they shouldn't be penalyzed because they can respec to fulfill another role while not in combat.

I am not saying hybrids should not do less dps than pure classes. The shouldn't with the way things stand. But their lack dps should be due to the synergy and buffs they bring, not their ability to respec into a different role.

Alright then, might as well give it a name at this point.

Manly^H^H^H^H^H Frostfire armor.
Increases your chance to critically hit with spells by 3% and allows 30% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting.
Only one type of Armor spell can be active on the Mage at any time. Lasts 30 minutes.

Nah you got it wrong manly.

Allows 15% of your mana regen to continue while casting, increases you chance to critically hit with spells by 4% and increases your haste rating by 30% of your spirit.

Edit: was orginally going to post something more useless involving an armor-> haste rating conversion to tie it to frost armor in addition to mage armor and molten armor..

So far Deamonic Armor has practically never been used in TBC because Fel Armor was almost always superior regardless unless in arena when not teamed with a healer against melees. And even here rogues fuck them up so much that its probably still not worth using.
Our armrors are fine and it is absoulutely no problem that armors can serve multiple purposes. Why talented armors only should be worn is beyond me anyway. Yo got an array of armrors to choose from and most of the time you can choose between 2 depending what you are doing. This is good design by my book since we are not bound to talent speccs so that one of the armor is viable but instead can always choose at least between 2. This is what I call good game design, giving the player options not forcing them down into something specific.
Changing the armors so that only one is viable through talents would mean significantly weaken them and being forced to spend additional talent points which are scarce anyway.
No thanks.

Way to totally misinterpret (and miss the point of) my post.

If armors are role-based (like new Warlock armors) then you use the appropriate armor for the appropriate role.

If armors are school-based, then you use the appropriate armor for the school you are talented with.

Mage armors currently have a foot in both camps, but not comprehensively. Molten armor has both PvE and PvP utility, of a kind, but currently Mage Armor is PvE only and Frost Armor PvP only (Mage Armor at least gets the -duration on debuffs in Wrath). Molten and Frost armors get "free" utility effects from speccing into the appropriate trees (stuns, snares), Mage Armor doesn't.

Suggesting that the status quo gives real "choice" is farcial. In PvE, if you have a shadow priest you use Molten and if you don't you use Mage. In (serious, i.e. Arena) PvP you use Frost, 95% of the time.

If the status quo were fine then we wouldn't be having this discussion, nor would Manly (who is about as level-headed and whine-free mage as can be found anywhere) be suggesting improvements.

I did understand your PoV perfectly fine thank you but it seems you are not getting what I was saying. To put it in a nuthsell: There is nothing wrong when armors are not deeply specialized for a cerrain purpose, they still beenfit you enough that you can choose one or another and they benefit you enough to make the choice worthwhile. Normally you can at least choose between 2 armors which is enough.
Mage Armor maybe not getting a direct benefit but it synergizes very well with talents like Student of Mind, Arcane Meditation, Imp Manashield. So still no problem here in my eyes.
MA is prefectly fine and I am sure there will be enough fihts where the extra resistance might come in handy.
Besides, there is more than Raids.

What is serious PvP to you? Arena? Because Frost Armor does exceptionally nothing for you in fights against casters. And yes I do switch armors if appropiate in PvP.

Yes you do have a choice and you already said it. If your regen is good enough or the fight is short enough you go with Molten Armor. If this is not the case you go for Mage Armor. There is nothing farcial about it.

Just because you claim that the "status quo" is not fine does not mean that all have to agree with.
Besides there are much more dire needs to improve certain talents and spells. Flamestrike and Burnout to just name one out of each field.

I am content with the new Mage Armor and I think they are nicely done overall.

From the warlock forums

Although it's not specifically stated I assume this will apply to both permanent and temporary pets such as the water elemental.

Armors shouldn't be school based. Things which buff a specific school are called talents.

Actually our armors are not school based. Ofc. there are a few talents which have synergies to the armors like frostbite for Ice armor, impact and ignite for molten armor, etc., but they are situational and not too strong.

The problem with our Armors actually is that they are all "universal" (without frost):

• Mage Armor: Offensive (Manareg) and Defensive (reduced debuff duration and resistances)
• Molten Armor: Offensive (3% crit) and Defensive (-5% enemy crit and "backfire")
• Ice Armor: only Defensive (frost resistance, armor and slow effects when hit)

The problem with these universal armors is that you always only use a part of the aura (what makes them so week) and you mostly use always the same aura in pve or pvp.

But I think the purpose of mage armors should be to react and adapt to different situations and always use the aura which is best suited for a certain situation / encounter.
So I'd suggest the auras as following:

• Ice Armor: Defensive - reduced debuff duration, magical resistances, some armor and slow effect on hit (armor for pvp and pve encounters with heavy magical dmg, ugly debuffs and resistance fights)
• Mage Armor: AoE - reduced manacosts and aggro for AoE spells and increased dmg somehow or cap for AoE spells.
• Molten Armor: Offensive - manareg, +x% crit, + 25% of spirit translates into spell haste rating or spell dmg. (it can also have the backfire component)

I'd like to chime in and say that with the current state of things, outside mana sources are still going to dwarf spirit-regen by a fair amount. JoW will have the same proc rate for fire and frost mages (before haste, which can drop the drop rate for frost by a fair bit), but it will be proc'ing for a LOT more. BoW is giving better returns relative to current ranks, VT still exists, even in its nerfed form, and will still be feuling a lot of your pool. Raid-wide mana springs may or may not stack (are they still bugged?). rejuv ticks, MoE procs, etc.

The way I look at it is; they didn't kill off VE, they just sliced it up and gave it to more people. As an arcane mage, with raid buffs, I can push myself to maybe 350mp5/IFSR from int/spi (not counting BoW, and mp5 on gear - but thats with mage armour up) - lets optimistically say that in entry-level wrath I can get that to 700mp/5 - Paladins are TC'ing 700Mana/proc on JoW which I expect to be proc'ing slightly faster than once per 5 seconds. So JoW is already equal to my fully tallented and fairly well-geared spirit-regen.