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 had a thought for a simple solution - what would happen if all three armors had their mana cost removed? They're already undispellable, why not go whole hog and just turn them into the same thing as a Pally/DK aura or Warrior stance? It wouldn't buff any of them directly, but it would give a Mage freedom to choose which armor is most appropriate, second by second rather than guestimating the duration/outcome of an entire boss battle or PVP furball.
?
Most FFB builds I have looked at miss Combustion, favouring 2/3 in Pyromaniac rather than putting the 1 point into Combustion.
Why is this? Am I overlooking some simple fact?
Does Combustion not apply to FFB for some reason?
I haven't watched the builds closely, but I alwas picked Combustion if I had at least 32 in fire.
A possible argument is the interaction with shatter and old WG. If you clicked combustion and someone procced WG right afterwards, you essentially wasted Combustion.
Now with FoF, the chances of wasting Combustion are smaller.
I modfied my combustion sheet to include Finger of Frost (10% chance on shatter).
Combustion is still ahead in most cases.
You basically need 60% crit (before FoF) for Combustion to be worth only 1% crit.
And even then, it's still slightly better because you can time it with cooldowns.
Also, 0/30/41 specs will outperform 0/34/37 even on high gear levels if they make the Water Elemental survive in raids.
[Edit]:
Also polished my sheets and added 04/13/51 Warlocks. Let's just say that the clouds feel like they fly rather low these days
As a different note though:
At level 80 with Sunwell gear and blues, hit rating is a worse stat than spell damage per budget.
You need around 2.2k spell power for [Rigid Autumn's Glow] to be better than [Runed Scarlet Ruby] for strict DPS. However, not being capped will mess up your Scorch debuff if you get a miss, so it's not recommended.
If you're not on Scorch duty (Focus Magic or Winter's Chill duty are fine with miss chances), you can easily afford to drop hit.
And you need around 3k spell power for [Quick Autumn's Glow] to be on par with [Runed Scarlet Ruby] for pure PvE DPS of you have no haste on gear otherwise. With haste on gear, the threshold is even higher.
I had a thought for a simple solution - what would happen if all three armors had their mana cost removed? They're already undispellable, why not go whole hog and just turn them into the same thing as a Pally/DK aura or Warrior stance? It wouldn't buff any of them directly, but it would give a Mage freedom to choose which armor is most appropriate, second by second rather than guestimating the duration/outcome of an entire boss battle or PVP furball.
?
That doesn't address the problem. The problem is that they are fine for their situational uses in PvP ... but no matter how much you switch armors, they are pretty insignificant for PvE due to their bloated PvP side effects.
I'd be happy if the 30% regen aspect were made a separate (dispelable) buff while the three armors remain undispelable.
- Molten armor crit boosted to 6%
- Mage armor given 5% haste
- Frost armor given ~100 frost damage (@ lvl 70)
- Molten armor crit boosted to 6%
- Mage armor given 5% haste
- Frost armor given ~100 frost damage (@ lvl 70)
The problem with this is that depending on your gear/spec one armor is always clearly better than the others for any situation (crit armor for aoe would be an exception I guess), where as now for different situations (aoe, things hitting you, long fight, short fight, have sp, no sp etc...) a different armor is better, I think the armors are ok as they are but I really like the suggestion of having the mana cost removed from them, and even more importantly take them off the global c/d so you don't have to waste time to switch armors (maybe a slight delay in applying the armor's buff though so this couldnt be abused).
The problem with this is that depending on your gear/spec one armor is always clearly better than the others for any situation .
This is inevitably going to happen regardless, and what is so bad about having a different armor suit a different spec? 6% crit may suit a FFB elemental build better than haste or damage, haste obviously favors arcane & fire specs, and frost clearly prefers frost damage. At least then there is a suitable and desired armor for PvE, and instead of Warlock's all-in-one Fel Armor there is at least some variety remaining. If you're asking for some convoluted stance-dance-like mechanics to be implemented with the armors then I'd consider your expectations a little unreasonable considering how much of a class overhaul that would require in order for it to become anything beyond a gimmick.
Personally, I think some improvements are warranted for all the armors. Like has been said, mana regen is getting a massive overhaul and since we'll be limited to 1 potion / fight, it wouldn't surprise me much if we were "forced" to use Mage armor on most of the fights regardless of spec. And unless every single fight in WotLK has some kind of raidwide debuffs added, we have gotten 0 improvements on our Mage Armor.
There are lots of good ideas floating around for the armors and lets hope Blizzard actually takes them into account when they do the real overhaul of the mage class that we're all waiting for. I'm not asking for Fel armor on steroids here, but something to make all the armors at least competative with each other.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
You would want to yank all of the armors that we have now for three different damage buffs options? Those all just sort of seem too similar. I like the current functionality of one armor for keeping melee off you (basically pvp only), one armor for mana regen, and one armor for damage, but really with the current wotlk changes the damage armor falls drastically behind the others when you compare pvp to pve functionality. (Don't get turned off because I mentioned pvp, this has a point.)
If they're really making mage armor that great for pvp (which, make no mistake, right now it is), why can't they make molten armor stronger for pve? Molten armor as it exists in beta will probably be the LAST choice for pvp armor, and it's sort of grudgingly used in pve only when we really don't care about mana conservation. I think it should have some sort of component to offset the mana regen functionality of mage armor, like increasing crit damage while increasing spell cost. Having two armors to switch to midfight would really make mage armors more interesting if it was that worthwhile.
edit: Another cool idea would be to add haste with higher mana cost, and sort of bring back the "AB spam burn" option for dumping mana, except with the dynamics of other spells.
Basically the "throw more damage or crit onto an armor spell" has been done before. I'd like an armor with a real tradeoff that forced mages to use it situationally instead of a "+whatever damage" fel armor clone that you throw on and forget about, but powerful enough to make it competitive or even better when used well than static damage armors. They could completely change the role of armors in mage playstyles just by requiring the use of a brain to best utilize them.
The armors would keep all current attributes except Mage Armor losing the 30% regen in favor of a stackable second buff. I didn't say anything about removing the PvP aspects, just adding valuable PvE attributes to all three while making the 30% regen a separate dispelable buff since it seems essential to the class' sustainability (dispelable to avoid PvP implications). It gives essentially 3 unique versions of Fel Armor for PvE while maintaining their distinctly situational PvP bonuses.
The most important thing of all is that the change would be simple, easily coded and easily to understand from a balance design perspective. Getting too creative with mechanics at this stage in development is too late to adjust for implications, and too hopeful in my opinion.
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.
Well, I realise the state of things now, but I think that if we are to speak/design about armor mechanics in wotlk, we need to only take the current state of things in wotlk into account. With this said;
Mage Armor: mana regen (pve/pvp?), resistance (pvp), debuff duration halved (pvp)
Molten Armor: 3% crit (pve/pvp), -5% crit (purely pvp -- this case never happens in pve), damage dealt when hit (purely pvp - this is actively bad for pve)
Frost Armor: more armor (pvp), slow effect on hit (pvp)
My point has always been that the problem with the new changes to armor is that the mage armors now are a clear hint towards the fact that all of them are designed for pvp. I don't care really what we end up with; my point is simple: we need a real pve armor now. Why? Because we don't have any! Do we really need a new PVE armor if we already have armors we can use ? Yes, because the armors we use aren't even intended for pve. We end up using whichever serves best, but all of them suck (for pve play, save mage armor regen in some cases). What I always asked for is an acknowledgement of a lack of pve armor for mages in wotlk. I don't care what the new armor is. I propose some extremely conservative armor because it would not have any impact of mage scaling. I proposed it, because currently fire mages have no incentive/rewards from spirit gear at all. The reason for that is that the only way to take advantage of spirit, for fire spec, is to use mage armor, which is worse than molten armor. This is, in my view, a flawed concept. I do believe that my proposed changes would helps arcane too much (gain of a free 3% crit), but honestly I don't really have a solution to that. I could propose half a million different armors that would be possible, and everyone else could do the same too. But truth is, you want to disrupt as least as possible the current scaling. This means no new things like +100 spell dmg. Furthermore, if mages had a real pve-only armor, it would mean that mage pve scaling could be more standardised. Right now, how do you scale mage dps ? Do you assume the mage always use molten armor, so that when mana is an issue and hes using mage armor hes 3% crit below the intended dps ? Or you do the reverse and scale mages assuming mage armor is the default pve armor -- but then you would be rocking 3% more crit than the class was balance for.
Both of the cases suck for balancing purpose. This is why you want a real PVE only armor. Only this way you can properly balance mage dps. Furthermore, you make spirit universally at least usable in pve, in contrast to the current state of things.
--- edit:
I forgot to mention. Why proposing this change now? Because the new change to warlock armor finally hints towards a real pve armor. Before, it was more heals and more spell damage, which was pvp/pve. Now that they untied it, I think the same should be done with mages.
To be more precise, the reason you want another armor is because you can't increase an existing pvp armor power (so that it is usable in pve) without disrupting the pvp power of the armor. By having a clear armor separation between pvp and pve armor, you can finally avoid one role impede upon the design of the armor.
Last edited by manly : 08/05/08 at 12:50 PM.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
The most important thing of all is that the change would be simple, easily coded and easily to understand from a balance design perspective. Getting too creative with mechanics at this stage in development is too late to adjust for implications, and too hopeful in my opinion.
Maybe, and it's totally useless to throw out a wishlist on this forum (so I won't anymore), but they DID drastically change the mechanics of mage armor. It was for pvp instead of pve, but it was still a very big change in how it works. I think that shows that they're still willing to change mechanics of existing abilities a good amount, and Blizz has said that they're still in the stages of altering HOW abilities work moreso than trying to actually play with numbers yet.
While true, Manly, I would like to point out something minor, but present. You equate 'PvE' with 'raiding', correct? One might go so far as saying that you equate 'PvE' with 'boss fights in raids'.
While soloing (whether leveling or not), Molten Armor is probably the perfect armor that we have access to. You could take a hit or two while soloing, so the crit reduction is useful. The increase to crit directly assists in progressing faster, and the fire damage reflection is not trivial. If you have Impact (which will probably be far fewer mages in Wrath, if it doesn't move), then the stun can also help.
I can't really speak for PvP, but everything I've been told is that mana regeneration is secondary to other concerns. This points to Mage Armor being meant for PvE. I would say, ability for ability, that Fel Armor buries it right now. Whether or not that is balanced on the grander scheme, that is hard to say.
Something that would be interesting is if they attached Magic Absorption's 'mana return on resist' ability to Mage Armor, and then give Magic Absorption an increased return. That might be interesting. I don't think that's what you and others are looking for, though.
Both of the cases suck for balancing purpose. This is why you want a real PVE only armor. Only this way you can properly balance mage dps. Furthermore, you make spirit universally at least usable in pve, in contrast to the current state of things.
Having a PvE-only armor would be ideal for helping them figure out where they want mages to go and letting them fine-tune the balance, but the whole armor system right now is a mix of some pve and some PvP incentives (except for frost armor, for no good reason). I don't think they would consider a new straight PvE armor solely because it would make the other three existing armors obsolete entirely for PvE, and not all three armors will be useful enough for PvP to justify their existence (i.e., molten armor). To avoid totally regurgitating what I said above, the short story in my eyes is that they need to make molten armor substantially better for PvE and not add another. That would give us the one clear PvE armor for us to be balanced around while not making other armors totally useless for other aspects of the game.
edit for clarity: But I'd still like to have molten armor be changed into something to compliment mage armor as said above.
While soloing (whether leveling or not), Molten Armor is probably the perfect armor that we have access to. You could take a hit or two while soloing, so the crit reduction is useful. The increase to crit directly assists in progressing faster, and the fire damage reflection is not trivial. If you have Impact (which will probably be far fewer mages in Wrath, if it doesn't move), then the stun can also help.
I actually use Mage Armor as much as possible while soloing, because I find that never, ever having to stop and drink is usually worth in terms of getting the most done in a given period of time than anything offered by the other two Armors.
Manly's point about Molten vs. Mage and whether you're being balanced around too much crit or too little is spot-on. I mean, yeah, in theory they could be working on the average, balancing us around having 1.5% extra crit so that we're either 1.5% too high or too low, but either way, it's clunky. I argued for a long time that Mage Armor should be converted to the standard PvE armor by removing its resistance and adding Molten Armor's crit bonus, with Molten Armor and Ice Armor being defensive armors selected based on spec or situation. Another alternative would be giving all three armors different, but at least approximately equal offensive and defensive bonuses so that you'd pretty much always use the armor appropriate to your spec. They could tweak Frozen Core to add a +Frost Spell Power and casting regen bonus when Ice Armor is active, they could adjust Mage Armor to give a +Arcane damage bonus, and they could increase the crit on Molten Armor but make it affect only Fire spells, for example (and there are probably a dozen other ways it could be accomplished). But the current mish-mash of PvE and PvP effects is pretty bad.
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.
Lhivera: Oh, Manly's main point I have no issue with. On using Mage Armor... um, it's probably because of my gear level and whatnot, but between gems and Evocating, I can run with Molten Armor and never really worry about mana. Mage Armor would be a bit of overkill for me.
I do certainly agree that Spirit needs to be made more valuable for all Mages, not just Arcane mages.
Having a PvE-only armor would be ideal for helping them figure out where they want mages to go and letting them fine-tune the balance, but the whole armor system right now is a mix of some pve and some PvP incentives (except for frost armor, for no good reason). I don't think they would consider a new straight PvE armor solely because it would make the other three existing armors obsolete entirely for PvE, and not all three armors will be useful enough for PvP to justify their existence (i.e., molten armor). To avoid totally regurgitating what I said above, the short story in my eyes is that they need to make molten armor substantially better for PvE and not add another. That would give us the one clear PvE armor for us to be balanced around while not making other armors totally useless for other aspects of the game.
Except that is precisely what they did for Warlock armors. You can't believe that they are against a concept which they specifically implemented recently. Fel Armor is now purely a PvE armor and Demon Armor purely a PvP armor.
Except that is precisely what they did for Warlock armors. You can't believe that they are against a concept which they specifically implemented recently. Fel Armor is now purely a PvE armor and Demon Armor purely a PvP armor.
That's true enough, but it's not entirely the same because warlocks had one armor that was the best for PvP AND PvE, and mages don't have that issue. They are really screwing us by making all of our armors essentially hybrids, but they didn't equalize our armors' roles with warlocks and there's no indication right now they want to either. The problem for us is that we have several mediocre options, whereas warlocks had one that was better than all of ours. The demon armor and mage armor changes show how they want to change the face of PvP, but it doesn't really clear up PvE at all. We still have two viable armors for different situations, but if you combined their effects they'd still be leaps and bounds worse than fel armor. That justifies them giving us one great PvE armor, but it's inconsistent with what they've done with our armors up until now and I'm not sure Blizzard would want to abandon ship and change the fact that we have different armors for different things, which is why I suggested a couple posts back getting two PvE armors that play off each other.
One great PvE armor would be fine, so here's to hoping. I just don't think they'll do it.
Lhivera: Oh, Manly's main point I have no issue with. On using Mage Armor... um, it's probably because of my gear level and whatnot, but between gems and Evocating, I can run with Molten Armor and never really worry about mana. Mage Armor would be a bit of overkill for me.
Have you done the math as to whether using Mage Armor could let you avoid having to use Evocation at all, and if so, whether this increase in available time could be superior for overall damage done?
Having a PvE-only armor would be ideal for helping them figure out where they want mages to go and letting them fine-tune the balance, but the whole armor system right now is a mix of some pve and some PvP incentives (except for frost armor, for no good reason). I don't think they would consider a new straight PvE armor solely because it would make the other three existing armors obsolete entirely for PvE, and not all three armors will be useful enough for PvP to justify their existence (i.e., molten armor). To avoid totally regurgitating what I said above, the short story in my eyes is that they need to make molten armor substantially better for PvE and not add another. That would give us the one clear PvE armor for us to be balanced around while not making other armors totally useless for other aspects of the game.
Well, I didn't say it specifically, but boosting molten armor drastically means boosting its pvp power drastically. This is why I believe pve should have its own armor. The goal is avoid pvp changes whenever possible, to minimize the balancing effort.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Have you done the math as to whether using Mage Armor could let you avoid having to use Evocation at all, and if so, whether this increase in available time could be superior for overall damage done?
Evocation is about 50% better than mage armour for a fire mage in a common T6 or higher level gear set.
You're actually better off speccing respeccing into 10/48/3 instead of using mage armour with 2/48/11.
(More info in my signature, summary at the end of the post.)
We'll see how things will be at 80 and what changes we still have coming.
Have you done the math as to whether using Mage Armor could let you avoid having to use Evocation at all, and if so, whether this increase in available time could be superior for overall damage done?
No, I have not. However, since I was referring to soloing specifically, I did not feel that I should subject that aspect of my play to the same scrutiny and theorycrafting that my group play does.
Of course, mostly what I've been doing lately on my Mage is farming Fire Elementals for Primal Fire, so I've had Mage Armor up for the Resists. :p
I guess I could theorycraft it, but I'm not sure how much it would help... it would gain me at most 8s every 6min... I think the stress put on my system to play optimally is worth at least 8s.
Lhivera: Oh, Manly's main point I have no issue with. On using Mage Armor... um, it's probably because of my gear level and whatnot, but between gems and Evocating, I can run with Molten Armor and never really worry about mana. Mage Armor would be a bit of overkill for me.
Bah! An inventory slot and time evocating lost! Seriously, though, it's not like farming is hard, either way works fine, I expect. 2-3 Frostbolts per kill is hardly taxing. I find that if I use Mage Armor, I don't need a gem, I don't need to evocate, I don't need to carry food and water, thus more farming between trips to town. But still, it's not like we need an armor designed for soloing.
In other news, I really wish Blizzard would let us know whether the changes being implemented for other pets are going to apply to the Water Elemental (avoidance and this new hit scaling, primarily). Also, I saw some comments recently that they had removed a pet tab from classes that don't have pets, which implies they've been messing with the pet tab on character sheets. Anyone know if Mages get a pet tab now when their water elemental is summoned? (Hunter/Warlock pet tabs appear only when the pet is out, so this shouldn't be a problem for them to implement for us, and would greatly improve transparency of how the Elemental functions.)
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.
Well, I didn't say it specifically, but boosting molten armor drastically means boosting its pvp power drastically. This is why I believe pve should have its own armor. The goal is avoid pvp changes whenever possible, to minimize the balancing effort.
Well, if you think about it any PvE damage armor would be pretty great for PvP if the mage wasn't getting focused. And if he is then frost or mage armor will be better depending on what is beating him over the head. Any offensive armor can potentially imbalance PvP if you get into a situation where you don't need a defensive armor.
I agree that the easiest pill for Blizzard to swallow to give us a good armor is one that helps our PvE damage without imbalancing PvP, but I don't think that's very easy to do. They can take out the PvP components of molten armor to try to balance it for all I care; I don't think it's going to be used much for PvP in its current state anyway. But I think it's just too naive to say that a great damage armor won't be utilized in PvP to tear someone in half unless the cost of armor swapping becomes prohibitively high.
If the recent changes Blizzard has made have shown us anything, it is that they aren't afraid to make sweeping changes in WotLK. Thinking things will be the same because they have always been that way and "Blizzard would never change that" should stop. Blizzard is changing things like that that left and right. Some examples:
We're not entirely happy with the way the Feral ended up in BC. The idea was that you could be a decent tank and a decent melee dps class, so Ferals were something you wanted to bring if you weren't the kind of guild that swapped different people out for every boss. But I don't think "convenience factor" is ultimately a great value to bring to a raid. The problem was we were kind of stuck because if we made Ferals end-game tanks and amazing melee, then the rogues were screwed, because they couldn't go respec to tank or heal.
But now we have a chance to add some new talents, and we'd like for some of them to be the kind that let a druid declare that she is more of a cat or more of a bear. It doesn't have to be shoehorning two whole talent trees into one, but even offering a few choices would go a long way.
Kitty DPS = Rogue DPS (or close to it). That was a "never going to happen" line since WoW started.
Class design isn't done. We are shooting for more parity. Nobody should get a raid spot because their one talent brings a huge dps (or mana or healing or health) benefit to the raid that no other spec can provide.
Hence changing WF totem. Changing VE/VT with shadow priests. And so on.
Seriously though, it's easier for to focus on only a couple of classes at a time. We find that way we are more in sync on the direction of the class and its problems. We don't work in an environment where each person goes to their desk, throws in the talents for one class, and then we pour them all into the game. A lot of the time it's 10% actual talent implementation and 90% brainstorming and discussion.
...
But even then, you're more likely to see ability changes than number adjusting. We need to feel like the abilities have a chance of working out before we go into the mode of comparing everyone's dps and threat and survival in a variety of situations. The encounter design and item design need to be at that level too. We're still debating things like encounters and raid stacking will work. Think about all the changes: many stats are universal now (meaning melee hit and spell hit are the same as far as items are concerned), most buffs affect the entire raid, we're trying to offer fewer very specialized items as random drops, etc. etc. It ends up being a lot of changes all with ramifications for every class.
They feel they are in "brainstorm mode". Not "tweak mage DPS by 1.7%" mode. I read the theorycrafting here with great interest--I've always been interested in it. But worrying that fire DPS is 10% behind arcane is a little premature at the moment when 10 fire talents might (and probably will) be overhauled. Not tweaked but totally changed. I am not certain what the best solution is with hybrid classes. Or mage armors vs. warlock armors. But don't rule out massive changes. Blizzard isn't and that is what matters.
08/05/08, 10:23 AM
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