5-man mechanics aren't nearly as numbers focused in the first place, and I really doubt that dealing less sustained damage would dethrone us from our current place as kings of the 5-man dps slot.
So you're goign to have a minimum raid roster of 50 people so that you can have a backup for each of these slots so your raid isn't a suboptimal piece of crap half the time due to key specs being missing?
No, you're going to have people play classes instead of specs. Everything Blizzard is doing points to this becoming a requirement - people who play 3 raid-useful specs are going to have to learn how to play and gear for at least 2 out of 3 of those specs, and preferably 3, otherwise it will be literally impossible to make optimal raids without having a huge bench.
Correction: it is becoming a requirement for a very small subset of raiders who insist upon having the perfectly optimal raid configuration for every encounter. Blizzard's intent is almost certainly the opposite -- to make sure that every spec brings something useful so that the differences between optimal and suboptimal are narrowed considerably. OK, your Frost Mage showed up and your Fire Mage didn't. With old Improved Scorch and Winter's Chill, that means your Frost Mage better respec, because Improved Scorch is highly valuable to your Warlocks. With new Improved Scorch and Winter's Chill, there's still going to be a difference depending on raid composition, but it's now a much smaller difference, and most raiders will cheerfully head into the dungeon and live with it.
As we discussed many pages back now, Blizzard doesn't care if your raid group is totally optimal; very much to the contrary, they want us to have much greater flexibility in our raid compositions:
A more fun, interesting and ultimately fair direction is that you actually have some choices in who to bring. Imagine running a raid with no warrior tanks at all.
They're not saying "you have choices in who to exclude so as to perfectly optimize your raid." They're saying, "there will now be a greater variety of viable raid combinations, and if you don't have any (class X or spec Y) handy, that no longer means you can't win."
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.
I just wish that there was at least some sign at all with what direction each tree is to go in ... currently there is simply no identity for any of them except frost remaining the PvP-centric tree (despite the countless PvP talents in Fire/Arcane).
I want the devs to do a clean sweep of the trees and say something of likes of; "Here's a ton of utility for Arcane. It is now the utility tree... utility utility utility with some "fun" DPS. Fire and Frost get to do all the DPS, equally... DPS DPS DPS. Fire gets all the AoE stuff... Frost all the PvP stuff. Have fun."
I'm getting sick of having 3 colors of bolts and the devs designing all 3 trees such that essentially they say "Pick one!" and no matter what you pick you're going to be able to accomplish the same things in PvE and PvP... because that is exactly what it seems like with all the PvP-heavy talents in fire, and the nuke-focus in Arcane/Frost. Three renaissance trees with no real identities except sub-par DPS.
<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
I want the devs to do a clean sweep of the trees and say something of likes of; "Here's a ton of utility for Arcane. It is now the utility tree... utility utility utility with some "fun" DPS. Fire and Frost get to do all the DPS, equally... DPS DPS DPS. Fire gets all the AoE stuff... Frost all the PvP stuff. Have fun."
That's very much the opposite of what they're doing and should be doing. That relegates trees to content. The first Mage you meet in a raid is Spec X, the rest are spec Y, and every mage you meet in PvP is spec Z. Locking trees to content types is a recipe for monotony, and they're trying very hard to move away from that. Frost is not the PvP centric tree because that's what Blizzard wants it to be, it's simply because they haven't figured out a good way to make Fire PvP work yet. I suspect you'll be seeing a lot of Arcane PvPers, though.
Originally Posted by manly
Well, you arcane whiners got what you asked.
Has that change actually happened, or is it Yet Another Calculator Update Error?
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.
<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
Hi everyone, i've kind of lurked here for awhile but some here may know me from the live forums or other forums (like the wiki).
First of all I want to say thank you to the people here who are in the beta and putting their word on the beta forums -- its interesting to read and comforting knowing people who know what they're talking about are the ones Blizzard is listening to.
However the reason I am posting here now is I recently read Manly's new topic on the beta forum, and I wanted to make a few specific comments. For those who don't know me, I PVP, I'm a S3 gladiator, and I don't PVE much but I understand the mechanics and math and overall "jist" of what goes into it and how it needs to be balanced. I noticed a few of the ideas that were spouted in Manly's thread are good ideas but would have a negative impact on PVP. Here's a few examples:
- While I agree mages need a more PVE-friendly armor like warlocks, you have to understand Warlocks have only one playstyle in arenas and said armor benefits all playstyles. Furthermore any Warlock who is SL/SL will not be using Demon Armor much, if ever. The melee mitigation is nice but warlocks are itemized for Hp/Stam/Resil and the healing benefit of Fel Armor is superior in both aspects of the game.
The solution isn't so simple though. The new effect on Mage armor is unclear to me. It says "harmful" magic effects. I'm going to assume this means everything from chill effects to dots to polymorphs, but if it ends up as dots only then my point is moot. Each of the mage armor spells are utilized by which spec the mage has entered. Fire mages in PVP use molten, obviously, for melee peel with impact. Frost mages use Ice armor because of frostbite. Mage armor enters the equation as a gimmick armor that you can substitute in when facing caster (or warlocks if it only affects dots) oriented comps.
If you're suggesting buffing one of these armors to increase damage output in PVE, it could backfire and make said armor overpowered in PVP. You can't stack the effects of one armor onto the other either since each are enhanced by talents (impact/frostbite). Full arcane PVP mages will still be able to get either impact or frostbite, so Mage armor is kind of a prismatic type of thing.
I see you suggested adding a completely new armor, and I agree that this is the way to approach it.
- Evocation out of combat is not happening, sorry. This has such massive implications for Arenas it's not even funny. I'd suggest you add that "this does not apply in Arenas" somewhere in your post or Blizzard might take it the wrong way. I played priest/mage at the beginning of this season and against certain comps such as druid/warrior, the entire point of fighting is to drink. Fear + sheep and nova rotations to let your partner get out of combat and drink. Some games end up lasting 15-20 minutes and I drink 2 stacks of water. If evoc has no cooldown out of combat, every time the mage leaves combat in arenas he's going to evocate instead of drink and get way more mana back than he should.
They added the 5 second rule to drinking in arenas for a reason, we shouldn't be suggesting mages get infinite mana in 2's. That's basically what is being proposed by that change.
- Focus magic - This should not cost 1000 mana, period. I don't know how mana pools scale right now, but I have about 10,000 mana as frost spec with my buff on in PVP gear. If we're talking in terms of how much mana Focus Magic should cost at level 70, right now it costs 535 mana, which is still too much. The charges in PVP aren't an issue - its going to be considered an extra trinket at the cost of a little mana and a GCD. 300-400 mana is appropriate for the spell for PVP so that it is used situationally and isn't spammed mindlessly, but I don't know what that makes out to be at level 80.
The spell should simply have no charges (to help it in PVE), have a cooldown (to offset the charges and reduced mana cost for PVP) and have its mana cost lowered.
just reminding everyone that pvp does exist and at some point Blizzard's going to have to begin balancing around arenas and invite a ton of gladiators to the beta to get that part done so that it's not a steaming pile of imbalance at release. Seems by the way of the current changes that they're more focused on concepts and PVE and "slots in raids" than anything right now, which makes sense.
Why are you all so hell bent on utility, I specifically rerolled away from warlock early on because I wanted to nuke the ever loving shit out of things. Pure dps is fine as long as we do enough, that's how the class has always been described. We should be clamoring for more involved casting mechanics.
I would just like to emphasize this statement, since it is the camp that I am currently sitting in.
Focus magic is great as it is.
Our armors are fine.
WTB more involved casting mechanics.
Ah evocation would have to differ in arenas. Obvious loophole there.
<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
Pure DPS just doesn't work anymore. It's either overpowered when you have other people providing you with buffs/debuffs you can make use of, or underpowered when you don't. If a Mage produces 15% more DPS than other DPS casters as long as he's got a Warlock, a Shadow Priest, a Boomkin and a Shaman helping him out, OK, that's great in a 25-man raid, but it means he's likely to be producing some 10% less DPS in a 10-man or 5-man where he doesn't have all those advantages, thus locking him into raid content. If his damage is balanced around not having those advantages, then he's an unholy overpowered monster when he's in a raid and he does have them.
We do need more involved casting mechanics, however. What they've accomplished with Affliction and Destruction is exactly the sort of thing we should be after, where you want to be including at least four different spells in your rotations.
I don't really agree with this, because the example Rogues set is that there is somebody there who thinks that "unholy overpowered-ness" is alright. If we're supposed to have a DPS role, that's great, but we need to be good at that role if we're to have it. Unfortunately, Mages don't have the "unadulterated DPS" tree. I think that's what the Arcane tree is supposed to become, even though Fire would seem more appropriate. Unfortunately, they're weaving in abilities such as Focus Magic which are rather specious as to their usefulness in either role, leading to confusion on our end.
I'm very much with others when I think that Focus Magic should be tied to a main nuke, such as Barrage, and that abilities like Incanter's Absorption need to seriously be re-thought, as well as Slow. It's questionable whether any of those abilities have any usefulness in PvP or PvE. Considering either the cost, or what you give up when you take abilities like Slow or Absorption.
Personally I feel that Focus Magic should be a stacking debuff with something like a 15 second timer that continues to build as more gets added to the stack. In such a manner it's useful for both PvP and PvE, as it becomes something that needs to be cleansed as well as an ability that will progressively increase your DPS on longer fights.
That's very much the opposite of what they're doing and should be doing. That relegates trees to content. The first Mage you meet in a raid is Spec X, the rest are spec Y, and every mage you meet in PvP is spec Z. Locking trees to content types is a recipe for monotony, and they're trying very hard to move away from that. Frost is not the PvP centric tree because that's what Blizzard wants it to be, it's simply because they haven't figured out a good way to make Fire PvP work yet. I suspect you'll be seeing a lot of Arcane PvPers, though.
I'm sorry but there has to be drawbacks to not speccing something else or specs in general lose their meaning. If you opt for monotony you create boredom, if you opt for distinct identites you'll inevitably get someone complaining about viability in a certain portion of content... but that comes with the territory. You can't have 3 viable PvE raiding, AoE, kiting, DPS, PvP trees without sucking the life out of your talent points. You can't simply allow all 3 trees to do all roles equally. There was never any mention of 'leaving specs out of content' either. You don't have to currently spec Arcane/Frost/Fire for AoE and be perfectly viable for killing MH trash... you don't have to be Frost to viably kill Illidan fiends... you don't have to be Fire to kill Brutallus. Giving one spec something doesn't remove the ability for another spec to do it.
How can you reconcile this with the intent to make all specs desirable in raids? There are 30 specs in Wrath of the Lich King, presuming you want one of each with the exception of some of the pure-dps trees(you probably don't want 1 frost, fire, and arcane mage or one combat, assassination, and subtlety rogue for example), that means that you have _25_ different "classes". So you're goign to have a minimum raid roster of 50 people so that you can have a backup for each of these slots so your raid isn't a suboptimal piece of crap half the time due to key specs being missing?
Well with (many?) more specs than raid spots the direction Blizzard is going is having different roles handled equally by more than one spec. We are already use to this with the broad roles of tank, dps, and healer. They are just taking this concept further.
Warlocks bring CoE, which is great (now) for almost all casters. But they are considering giving some disease of death knights the exact same (non-stacking effect). Your warlock shows up and your DK doesn't? Bring the lock. The opposite happens, bring the DK. If both show up? Bring both and tell the lock to curse recklessness instead.
Your ret paly has a softball game? Bring the boomkin. Your frostfire elementalist/holy paly husband & wife combo have a birthday party? Bring the arcane mage & disc priest brothers.
THAT is what they are trying for. Now what it does mean is that for guilds that min-max to the extreme, WoW will be "easy mode". It is hard to have a DPS check fight, where people have to gear up and farm lower bosses for months, until raid DPS reaches X and not suddenly require a tank, 5 healers and 19 rogues. If people are going to be able to do it with all sorts of raid combos (as Blizzard wants) then people who do min-max that extra 5% are going to laugh and wave their epeen all around. I really don't care about this, but some might.
This is why I don't like respec'ing. I'm a frost mage. I want to bring enough to the table to be invited to raids based on my contributions. I don't want to hear, "Hey Zeldyrr, we are fighting bosses, X, Y and Z tonight. Can you respec fire for X, frost for Y, and frostfire with 11 in arcane for focus magic for Z?" I'd much rather hear, "On the X fight keep Winter's Grasp and Chill up on X's golem pet as much as possible so the DK can hold aggro, make sure you summon your elemental in between the lava waves on Y when we need the burst, and keep the adds rounded up on the Z fight with your 85% snaring, frostbiting, critting blizzard."
Why are you all so hell bent on utility, I specifically rerolled away from warlock early on because I wanted to nuke the ever loving shit out of things. Pure dps is fine as long as we do enough, that's how the class has always been described. We should be clamoring for more involved casting mechanics.
This. Currently the trend blue show (I'd like to say "don't oppose" rather than "desire") is the Pure DPS classes having a choice between "Flat DPS" and "drop a little DPS for some utility".
Look at the latest lock notes: "Destro has less utility thus more dps" is more or less what they said; With hunters it's the same: it's looking almost certain that in PvE terms, the BM will supercede then Surv, but the latter will offer valuable buffs. Rogues (though I'm not following them terribly well lately) -seem- to refer to Hemo as their utility spec. Even if it's with a pinch of salt and still not terribly fantastic.
Why exactly mages have a utility buff for each tree they own is beyond me; it's counter-intuitive and it'll possibly shoe-horn us into a state where we'll be constantly chanting "yes of course (DPS spec lock/hunter/rogue) outputs more, we offer utility" followed up by "of course our utility is worse than (Utility spec lock/hunter/rogue), we have it spread out in 3 trees" and thus, in a bizzare and convoluted way, be a class which has a number of PvE specs, none of which are either great DPS or great utility but "meh" at both, at the same time, leading to a weird form of "jack of all..."
I'd like a change in direction. Either leave "a little" buff in each tree (like any lock may offer a "utility" curse) and have plenty of utility available in one of the trees (clearly, not the highest RDPS one) or revert to our previous state where i-Sc is not a true raid-buff and that abominably bad design arcane malarkey is either re-worked to be a self-buff or not at all.
I still think that the Improved Scorch idea is a great idea, the problem is that it's on a spell that's terrible for DPS. Basically if it was either a) applied by more than Scorch or b) applied by Scorch and then renewed by fire spells, I think it would be fine. I think the idea of stacking damage via Mage spells (in the same way that a Priest or Warlock can stack debuffs with independent spells) is something that would allow them to become more desirable in raids, especially if the debuff will stack faster or stay on longer with more than one Mage (obviously this means that the Mage would need bigger debuff stacks, but it would allow them to bring something unique and useful to a raid, as well as increase their specific type of DPS).
As for avoiding monotony... this is an MMORPG; kinda goes with the territory. So I'd say be more specific as to what you mean by monotony?
Pure DPS just doesn't work anymore. It's either overpowered when you have other people providing you with buffs/debuffs you can make use of, or underpowered when you don't. If a Mage produces 15% more DPS than other DPS casters as long as he's got a Warlock, a Shadow Priest, a Boomkin and a Shaman helping him out, OK, that's great in a 25-man raid, but it means he's likely to be producing some 10% less DPS in a 10-man or 5-man where he doesn't have all those advantages, thus locking him into raid content. If his damage is balanced around not having those advantages, then he's an unholy overpowered monster when he's in a raid and he does have them.
While a mage doesn't have as much damage without other classes boosting him, it works the other way too. If a moonkin doesn't have some other dps casters to buff, he loses a lot of his raid dps contribution.
I'm sorry but there has to be drawbacks to not speccing something else or specs in general lose their meaning. If you opt for monotony you create boredom, if you opt for distinct identites you'll inevitably get someone complaining about viability in a certain portion of content... but that comes with the territory. You can't have 3 viable PvE raiding, AoE, kiting, DPS, PvP trees without sucking the life out of your talent points. You can't simply allow all 3 trees to do all roles equally. There was never any mention of 'leaving specs out of content' either. You don't have to currently spec Arcane/Frost/Fire for AoE and be perfectly viable for killing MH trash... you don't have to be Frost to viably kill Illidan fiends... you don't have to be Fire to kill Brutallus. Giving one spec something doesn't remove the ability for another spec to do it.
Well, we're probably just disagreeing on the granularity of the focus. When you talk about a tree being PvP focused, that sets off alarm bells, because that implies two things for me: first, that the tree in question cannot perform competitively in a raid environment, and second, that the other two trees cannot perform competitively in a PvP environment.
This would be a bad situation. That's not even up for debate.
However, when you talk about a tree focusing on DPS, that's probably fine, as long as the other trees have other functions that are valuable enough in a raid environment to compensate for that DPS. The problem comes with some of the specifics you talk about: AOE is not, unless things are crazy in the level 80 AOE department, a strength that can compensate for reduced DPS. Same goes for kiting.
I think this is how I would boil it down:
- Every tree must be competitive in both raiding and PvP
- It doesn't matter how that competitiveness is achieved
- However, some abilities do not add to that competitiveness
For PvE, I would put the following strengths down as somewhat interchangeable; being stronger in one can justify being weaker in another:
These four abilities can be balanced against each other. You want Fire to be higher DPS than Frost and Arcane? That's fine, but you need to compensate by (for example) giving Frost a stronger raid debuff, and giving Arcane perhaps a way to reduce raid threat. Just as an example, you could adjust using all four of these features in varying amounts.
The following strengths cannot compensate for any of the above, and are thus must be considered only "flavor"; they can be used to distinguish specs, but not at the cost of reducing any of the above four items:
I don't expect these lists to be comprehensive, I'm just trying to illustrate my point. So, OK, they want Fire to be a premier AOE spec and Frost to be a premier kiting spec. That's fine -- but they don't factor into raid composition decisions, so they can't come at the cost of the other four items.
With these concepts in mind, it's clearly possible to balance all three trees so that they are equally desirable for raiding without making them homogenous.
It seems obvious to me that Blizzard is attempting to do this. Arcane gets highest DPS and the worst debuff. Frost gets lower DPS but a very strong debuff. The problem is that they seem to include AOE in the top list, and I doubt players are going to feel that it belongs there; this screws up the Fire tree. But as was said earlier, they're in brainstorming phase; they may well feel that Fire's groundwork is sound, and that by adjusting numbers on a few talents they can tune it up.
Now, how can the same equal-viability-with-different-flavors be achieved in PvP? No idea whatsoever, but I do believe it can be done.
The specifics of how it's achieved aside, this design concept seems clearly superior to me than the old "Tree X = Content Y" method of doing things.
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.
Okay, I'm going to make a nerdy reference that perfectly explains what I think is going on with mages. If you never played Magic, just ignore this post because it won't make any sense to you.
Okay, for those who ever played Magic the Gathering, remember back when Rav-finity was the only deck played in T2? It was so ungodly good that no other deck was really competitive. T2 basically became "who got the best opening Rav-finity hand wins" because that's what every serious competitive player would play. It was superior to every other deck, so it was the logical choice. There wasn't enough good hate to really counter it and it was too damn fast. Eventually, players started getting pissed off, nobody wanted to see Rav-finity decks anymore, and players stopped playing because it wasn't fun.
So, what did Wizards do? They nerfed the everloving shit out of Rav-finity. They easily could have banned a few cards and made it so that it was still competitive but not absolutely dominant, but instead they decided to break its back, cut it up into small pieces, and light the pieces on fire to ensure that Rav-finity would never be seen again ever. Ever. EVER.
I think Blizzard is taking a similar approach to the mage class. In most games, mage/wizard/sorcerer is the typically overpowered class. Insanely high damage, great burst, and aoe are pretty easy to get out of hand... and I think Blizzard wanted to get away from that, so rather than delicately buff and nerf certain things to make mages competitive but not dominant, they're specifically making the class subpar to hunters, rogues, and warlocks... because they don't want to piss players off by making yet another game where mage is the dominant dps class.
Oh and Lhiv, what bugs me about the changes to imp scorch and winter's chill isn't so much the change in utility, but that both can be provided by a 0/34/37 FFB mage. I think they're basically pigeonholing mages into the frostfire role, and the consistent nerfs to deep arcane builds support that trend.
The reason aoe talents are never considered is quite simple. If you meet an encounter with lots of aoe, you get infinitely better return on your investment if you bring more aoers rather than speccing into aoe.
QED AOE talents are bad.
<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
I still think that the Improved Scorch idea is a great idea, the problem is that it's on a spell that's terrible for DPS. Basically if it was either a) applied by more than Scorch or b) applied by Scorch and then renewed by fire spells, I think it would be fine.
They could easily do this with glyphs.
If the mage glyphs are anything like the proposed druid glyphs, they will change everything. Keep this in mind.
As an example, one druid glyph makes starfire renew moonfire. Another makes moonfire do next to nothing on the initial application, but greatly magnifies the periodic damage. This, if implemented, will entirely change our rotation.
Look at the latest lock notes: "Destro has less utility thus more dps" is more or less what they said; With hunters it's the same: it's looking almost certain that in PvE terms, the BM will supercede then Surv, but the latter will offer valuable buffs. Rogues (though I'm not following them terribly well lately) -seem- to refer to Hemo as their utility spec. Even if it's with a pinch of salt and still not terribly fantastic.
Why exactly mages have a utility buff for each tree they own is beyond me
Even Destruction warlocks, however, bring some utility. Basically, for Mages at least, they're stepping away from the Pure DPS, No Utility model that Rogues use and into a DPS + Utility in varying proportions model that Warlocks use. I suppose either method could have been successful, since both Rogues and Warlocks are successful. However, casters in general were lagging behind, and adding debuffs is a way to boost caster performance in general while simultaneously fixing Mage-specific problems, so maybe that's why they chose this route.
Originally Posted by Arazan
Oh and Lhiv, what bugs me about the changes to imp scorch and winter's chill isn't so much the change in utility, but that both can be provided by a 0/34/37 FFB mage.
I agree entirely (and said so a page or two ago). This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if 0/34/37 were 10% less DPS than deep Fire and deep Frost, but that is obviously not the case, and thus it's a problem.
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.
Oh and Lhiv, what bugs me about the changes to imp scorch and winter's chill isn't so much the change in utility, but that both can be provided by a 0/34/37 FFB mage. I think they're basically pigeonholing mages into the frostfire role, and the consistent nerfs to deep arcane builds support that trend.
Ironic you say that, in my view arcane has gained infinitely more than fire or frost (even both) compared to TBC. But I guess if you keep as a frame of reference 'the previous wotlk patch' then your relative nerfs seem in perspective twice as bad as you make them out to be.
<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
If the mage glyphs are anything like the proposed druid glyphs, they will change everything. Keep this in mind.
As an example, one druid glyph makes starfire renew moonfire. Another makes moonfire do next to nothing on the initial application, but greatly magnifies the periodic damage. This, if implemented, will entirely change our rotation.
I think the Mage class should stand on its own without the need for additional things such as glyphs. I'm not saying they shouldn't improve our power, but we shouldn't have to worry about needing something like a glyph to remain competitive.
The most frustrating thing of all is how simple it seems to fix most of the issues;
- move Focus Magic to deep Arcane and make it applied by AM pulses such as 3-5 charges added per pulse
- bump burnout up to 50% but make it apply only to Fireball, Scorch and Fireblast so FFB doesn't get out of control, and change it to ADD mana to raid members within 10 yards of the target
- change living bomb to a 20 second buff, 2 minute cooldown. Drastically increase explosion damage, give it a +damage component while active.
- remove imp Scorch and make it part of the base spell
- give Mage Armor 5% haste
- leave Frost alone
Deep Arcane gets utility & a purpose, Fire gets single target damage and a mana boost to melee mana-users(enhance shaman, ret paladins, prot paladins), Frost keeps its utility and damage. I think most players could live with that.
I think the Mage class should stand on its own without the need for additional things such as glyphs. I'm not saying they shouldn't improve our power, but we shouldn't have to worry about needing something like a glyph to remain competitive.
It isn't as if you're going to raid without Glyphs. They allow for an interesting amount of flexibility judging by the Moonkin ones available, so I don't see the problem.
Also, what is it with people wanting to cast AM so badly? These "Give AM a chance to refresh Focus Magic" suggestions basically hinge on the idea that you'll get a Missile Barrage proc, which then will manage to get the % chance needed to refresh Focus Magic if you're lucky. And if you're saying it should only be applied by AM then you're in the same boat, except with no debuff uptime until Missile Barrage. Otherwise you're casting a full duration AM, which is plainly awful. How is this a good idea?
Ironic you say that, in my view arcane has gained infinitely more than fire or frost (even both) compared to TBC. But I guess if you keep as a frame of reference 'the previous wotlk patch' then your relative nerfs seem in perspective twice as bad as you make them out to be.
Yeah, similar to how Warlocks consistently complained about their DOT coefficient nerfs in patch, what, 2.0.3, even though they were still almost universally much higher than they were in patch 2.0 -- frame of reference means everything.
That said, TBC Arcane was also the tree most in need of improvement, since it requires borderline exploitative play to make it function at all reasonably well.
Originally Posted by Talbain
I think the Mage class should stand on its own without the need for additional things such as glyphs. I'm not saying they shouldn't improve our power, but we shouldn't have to worry about needing something like a glyph to remain competitive.
Naturally, every class should be competitive when compared both without glyphs and with them. It's nice that glyphs can totally change playstyle and greatly amplify performance -- but if Class A is good without glyphs and Class B sucks without glyphs, then adding glyphs isn't suddenly going to make Class B competitive with Class A. Unless the glyphs themselves are obscenely overpowered, which would be bad.
ETA: Weren't we to expect a talent update today?
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.
08/05/08, 4:36 PM
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