Akston

Right. The only dps class that is remotely complex is the shadow priest which really isn't even a class, but rather a spec of a class. Outside of the random encounter that may happen stumble into creating dynamic play for certain dps classes (see my previous post about handling multiple jobs on mu'ru) nothing is really that interesting. I really don't understand why healers get exciting reactive gameplay and dps doesn't. Maybe i should just make a healing main and stop complaining but that doesn't really solve anything.

On another note doing encounters on a healer vs. a dps seem totally different. With a dps encounter design generally tends to be an annoyance and something you have to work around in order to be able to do what you need to be doing. With a healer the encounter sort of defines what it is that you are supposed to be doing. Having to stop or move isn't as big of a deal most of the time and in general healing just seems to be more in sync with the encounter than dps.

In short: Healing=react to surroundings and encounter design. DPS=avoid obstacles so that you can dps.

Edit: I guess when it comes down to it there is very little skill in dps. How some people manage to do a lot better or worse than other people is beyond me. We really have very little control over our dps. We basically just spam whatever rotation we use and hope for crits and whoever gets the best RNG wins. In addition to this our dps is even more based on RNG than most other classes because our main nuke is a 3s cast without haste making any crit or noncrit or resist in a fight have a much bigger impact on our overall dps.

With healing things like reaction time and mana conservation actually come into play and separate out the good from the bad far more than with dps. An amazing dps will be maybe a few hundred dps ahead of a so-so dps given equal buffs and group setup. An amazing healer can be over 20% of healing done because how they play actually has an extremely significant impact on how well they do.

 

Reinhars

* Missile Barrage - Arcane Blast replaced with Arcane Barrage (Gives your Arcane Barrage, Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt spells a 3/6/9/12/15% chance to reduce the channeled duration of the next Arcane Missiles spell by 2.5 secs and fire missiles every .5 sec.).
* Arcane Barrage - Mana cost reduced for all ranks (rank 1: 335 > 325, rank 3: 610 > 592).


And let the evergoing rotation quest begin anew.

 

Prod

Researching optimal gear and smart cooldown rotations is something above most peoples heads, even in top'ish end guilds.

 

JonIrenicus

I still wouldn't "love" it, but I'd prefer that to the current state, yes.

Of course you would not stop casting it to keep up the buff, just as I pay 4.50 and upwards for a gallon of gas now. Even with a higher cost, not having the extra fuel, or more overall dps, would still be a net negative.

The point is that I'd rather not have to suffer through the chore of keeping up the buff, just as I would rather get the energy of transportation from the electric grid (i.e. chevy volt) as opposed to gasoline. Virtually no mage enjoys keeping the scorch debuff up, they enjoy the benefits, but not the act, given the choice of having a debuff built in like winters chill, or the scorch mechanic, what mage would choose the latter?

imp scorch is like filling up your gas tank, no one enjoys doing it, but you must or else you aren't going anywhere.

Call what you wish, the issue is that scorch is something that hovers over every fire raiding mages head as a danger if it falls off as it gimps your dps. I'd rather not have to worry about the thread holding up the sword of Damocles above my head. Perhaps you enjoy this aspect, I call masochist.


No, I am glad the trees have different play styles, I just happen to like fires pve play style the least, precisely for the reasons listed above. But I do what I must to get things down, ala brutallus first kills.

Arcane is very dynamic as it stands, frost would be as well if they brought back a self buffed only version of winters grasp, but even without that, cooldown management elemental management provides some difference.

Fire is fire, nuke and and tune up, nuke and tuneup, where the tuneup costs you time away from your more enjoyable past time, heavy nuking! What incredible fun.

 

Akston

Weird. I guess it's just something that has become so automatic for me that i don't even think about it. Assuming this is really what is causing the disparity between the good and the bad, dps rankings are pretty much set before you ever enter combat. So i guess for dps knowledge>skill? Would really like it if there was some way that personal skill could really shine for dps. Basically as it stands now the only thing that really tips thing in the favor of one player or another is knowledge, gear and RNG.

 

Valestra

I still think that PoM giving passive 30% crit rate while not consumed is a bug and hope it gets fixed and getting the old coefficient back on Arcane Barrage.
Improve the AB debuff to 5 seconds and improve Focus Magic a bit, fix the 3/3 Prismatic Cloak bug and arcane is ready to rock in WotLK.

 

Decree

Can FFBolt proc brain freeze? I'd be interested to see how a 0/27/44 build would effect brain freeze, though I have my doubts that it would be better than 3 points in fire power.

 

Valestra

No you get it all wrong. Dynamic play means you have to react on spot and not getting into fixed casting cycles. Current situation well let me put it this way: I could program a bot with a few lines doing what mages do most of the time with very little for me left to interact with. How fun is that?
I actually dislike how everything gets focused on single target DPS. It gets boring and repetetive fast. I really hope there are a lot what many of you call 'gimmick' fights. Those are more fun than most DPS races like Brutallus for example for me.

I wish I could test it but my mage is 72 only right now and additionally Brain Freeze doesn't work on Beta servers at the moment. Purely guessing from wording I'd say no since FFB deals a type of damage called frostfire so I'd say no. But can be wrong of course.

 

Reinhars

Fire :
Your Fireball applies the "boiling" debuff. Target takes 10% more damage from frost.

Frost :
Your Frostbolt applies the "goose bumps" debuff. Target takes 10% more damage from fire.

Arcane :
Your Arcane Blast applies the "blablabla" debuff. Target takes 10% more damage from nature.

 

grimtage

I definitely enjoyed this aspect, it's something you have to pay attention to. I don't want them to remove more gameplay from the game; right now you only have to pay attention to your scorch debuff and make sure it's up before something happens that stops you from putting it up. If you took that away, you'd pay even less attention to the game, and it would get even more boring faster. It's not like other gameplay is different; shadowpriests get DoTs they need to put up, warlocks get curses they need to put up. They are all net dps gains, and they all require you to keep refreshing them, just because ours comes as a "15% fire buff" doesn't mean it's any different.

Though, my main is now a resto druid and thus it's just in my gameplay to keep buffs, debuffs, etc, just rolling (lifebloom!) and make sure they don't come off. I quite enjoy it, because it means mechanics like AoE silence have to be predicted - just adds more and more gameplay and reactivity to encounters.

 

frosty

I still didn't see a real argument against a new, mana refunding ability for mages in the arena. You seem to be somehow content with how the matches are fought out currently, which is kinda odd, since most people - including myself, but esp. some guildies being very high in 2v2 and 3v3 brackets with their lock/druid or hunter/druid comps, who did 30min matches regularly, and not to forget most spectators of Blizzards 2v2 Tournament - are/were more or less tired of these exhausting and boring fights.

But why shouldn't he get more mana back? What are the implications of it? And why isn't a mage allowed to fight with infinite ressources like rogues, warriors and virtually warlocks do as well? Do you really think it would have a huge impact on certain matchups, like allowing mage+X teams to beat their counter-comps now? Or would it just lead to more dynamic matches that don't last 15 min on average, also b/c the opponents can't just play on a slow pace and simply outlast the mage?

Don't get me wrong, i don't mean to provoke you or anything. I'm just wondering, whether you thought the matter out, or if there is anything I might miss. I have to admit, that i quit WoW several months ago, so i'm not really up-to-date about what's going on in the arenas. But as a former gladiator i'm also not a complete tool and got my share of experience. And improving the mana situation could be one of the most elegant ways to get mages (back?) to a competing level in 2v2 imo ... w/out having to rely on a rogue as their partner.

 

Thegoodman

This just isn't true. Some people are good at dps and some people suck at it, despite the same gear and CD rotations. The biggest difference between good and bad is attention span. The ability to waste zero time between casts is underrated for Mages/Warlocks and is often the difference between a good an bad player in endgame content.

 

grimtage

I do note this isn't really the place for this discussion, but I'll add my 2c anyway!

Don't forget cooldown stacking and such. Keeping a high fireball:scorch ratio is a great way to improve dps too. You can really see the difference between a good fire mage / destro lock and a bad one. They may be doing the same kind of thing - spamming fireball/shadowbolt - but they are spamming it differently and needing to give it less attention as it becomes second nature and paying more to the encounter and not dying.

 

Qbert

I agree... I don't see it as being any more overpowered than being able to get away and lifetap x 2 then bandage, and warlocks don't even need to get out of combat to do it (which isn't all that easy in arenas vs. any competent team). Other than the short cooldown, there really is no difference. Mages bring up the idea of actually not going OOM all the time and someone releases the hounds... I just don't get it. Imagine Rogues energy regen just stopping 3 minutes into every arena match, then saying it would be overpowered if it didn't.

 

Finito

Ok Akston, it's time for the "healing doesn't blow" counterargument. This little bit isn't entirely relevant to wotlk maging so I apologize to everyone for going off-topic, but we might all need a reminder for why we're here and not in the druid thread bitching about lifeblooms. Here is my two-step rationale for why I play a dps even though I have a gladiator priest and gladiator druid that, after raiding a little bit with, I refuse to pve heal on:

1) Healing is basically glorified whack-a-mole. HP goes down (mole pops up!) and you throw a heal if you can get it off before other healers (whack that mole!). They can add fresh new healing mechanics, they can make you watch your mana, they can make you not stand in the fire and they can make heals that are smart enough to heal whoever needs it most without your input (hence why resto shamans and wotlk priests will be the highest healers, always). However, I fully disagree with your notion that skill plays a larger role for healers than dps. Why?

Because healing has a bare minimum required to get the fight done and anything more is essentially extraneous, wasted effort.

This means that you can ALWAYS push the envelope with DPS to try to do better, whether against your past performances or against your peers, but if the healers keep everyone alive by the end of the fight then that's all they need to do. They can fight for larger portions of healing done. But in the end, REALLY, if everyone survives who cares? It just means they can afford to bring less healers next time.

2) Healing DOES NOT better "immerse" you in a fight more than DPSing. You have to adapt to a new fight, but it's just as annoying for healers to be interrupted as it is for DPS, except when they mess up the raid wipes. When DPS is worse because of mobility the fight just takes longer.

Also, there are fights where healers NEVER have to look at the boss. They sit staring at nameplates turning from green to red and green again over and over. This does not give you a "feel" for a fight. Every fight basically blends together with trash, except you can have more people being hit harder. Joy. The mechanics off the boss can oftentimes be irrelevant, especially on tank and spank fights. There are certainly dynamic healing bosses, but the same can be said for fights where DPS is significantly messed with in one form or another (like RoS).


To relate this more to the relevance of the current thread topic, I'm as much for a more dynamic playstyle as anyone, but for the point that we should all be loving having to maintain scorch debuffs to be effective, my response is this: hunters mash one macro and will outdamage you while you work your ass off with your sweet "dynamic" mechanics. If we have to lower our dps to maintain a debuff, it damned well better be justified by making us better than the buff-leeching classes who are inexplicably better than us. Having more a more interesting (and with that comes harder) job should be rewarded with better results than the classes who don't.

 

Qbert

The main problem with healing classes for Mages is the difference in roles and the effects of spirit & the 5-second rule. Healing is capped at the amount of HP required and heals are constantly canceled when they aren't required by the end of the cast. This leaves a vast amount of time during any encounter for healers to be out of the 5-second rule and they usually do spend 30-50% of any encounter out of the 5sr. DPS however is only capped by a) all targets being dead or b) all targets are immune or unable to be attacked, meaning there is rarely if ever a time for caster DPS to leave the 5sr.

The big problem comes in where spirit is itemized & budgeted identically for healers and casters. Since healers can get a vastly higher amount of regen from spirit due to being out of the 5sr much much more often, spirit is itemized and budgeted according to that amount of regen (otherwise healing mana would be absolutely trivialized). Caster DPS gets the short end of the stick getting only whatever benefits from spirit that buffs or talents provide. Even 60% regen while casting doesn't even approach the regen of 30% regen while casting plus 100% regen for 30-50% of the encounter. This really isn't a reply to the overview of raid healing... just emphasizing that spirit is the only link between healers and DPS casters, and the #1 cause for spirit being so overbudgeted for Mages, bar none.

Perhaps a fix to this would be to lower the 5-second rule for DPS casters to 3 seconds.

 

Tharia

Priests get spellpower and mp5 from spirit, even warlocks now get spellpowerand mp5, mages still get only mp5. This is abigger part of the problem than priests getting more mp5 out of it.

 

Qbert

Spirit is not MP5 in the traditional sense. MP5 the stat gives mana regardless of casting, spirit does not. That is the main reason Mages get less out of it, you certainly didn't understand the point.

 

Lgs

Blizz has been pushing spr onto mages for so long, I don't think we can expect a change now. It makes no sense.

Gnomes are creatures of destruction.

 

Nurru

Again, it's too early to complain about Spirit in Wrath when obviously new talents and regen mechanics aren't settled yet.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Lhivera

As Ronwyn pointed out, and I later confirmed with my own numbers, before the WC change it depended on whether you had Frozen Rune Weapon. Without FRW, it was a small buff. With FRW removed from the game, and with the WC change, it is a clear DPS increase.

Hm, I understood that Corruption was now clearly worth the GCD for the sake of Molten Core procs. And of course you want to watch for your imp crits, which guarantee your next cast will crit -- you don't want to blow that cast on an Immolate, and (if it's kept in the game) you may wish to blow it on a Chaos Bolt. As I said before, not rocket surgery, but a hell of a lot more interesting than what we've got in Fire and Frost, and moderately more than what we've got in Arcane.

ETA: (NM, I was confusing the effects of two different talents)

The real practical upshot of Molten Core is a 3% increase in Fire Damage, at the cost of (75% avg Incinerate dmg - avg Corruption dmg). At 3000 damage and 50% crit, I put Corruption at almost exactly 75% the average damage of Incinerate, making the talent worth slightly less than +3% damage; given the limited options for climbing the lower Destruction tiers, you're sure to have the talent, and thus it's going to be worth keeping Corruption on your target.

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.

 

Roywyn

Corruption in high gear is a ~100 DPS loss, and it gives you a 28% uptime of a 10% fire damage buff for a ~200 DPS gain.
It's DPM is atrocius though, due to a high base cost and not getting mana back via ISL.
If warlocks never have to life tap, using Corruption will be a ~100 DPS gain (that is rather likely at the moment).
If they actually continue having to tap, then they'll lose ~100 DPS to more life tapping, making it a wash.

Empowered Imp crits just happen, I don't think you can react to them really.
They're changing the Conflag/Immolate things every other builds, so we'll have to see what they decide to finalise there.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Lhivera

So they need to tune their casting cycles based on mana regen rates: use Corruption if I can afford to, don't if I can't. That, too, is complexity. You're right on the Empowered Imp crits; I was forgetting that they're going to work much like FoF, by the time you see it happen, you're just going to have to accept the result on the cast you already have in progress.

Still, we're really kind of picking nits here. There's no question that the Destruction DPS process has gone from being slightly less complex than Frost to being somewhat more complex, and that the Frost process is remaining almost static.

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.

 

alia

This wouldn't help matters much either because, as it stands now, DPS casters rarely actually stop casting. Perhaps a "fix" would be to itemize healing gear for spirit, and then itemize DPS caster gear with loads and loads of int. This would, due to the 2.3 (IIRC) changes increase the amount of mana we regen from spirit a lot. Perhaps tweak the relationship so that casters receive tons of benefit from the int-spirit regen while healing classes stay the same as it is currently.

So, in effect we might (say with 60% regen) get 3-400 mp5 while casting while a healer might only get 250 mp5 but 830 mp5 while not casting, which happens a substantial amount of time (or at least it does now). The numbers aren't important, but hopefully the concept is clear.

 

WarTotem

As for the Armor topic goes:
I've always seen Frost/Ice Armor as the defensive one, Mage Armor as utility/survivability for long fights and Molten Armor a burst-oriented shield in both offense and defense. Although I'ld like to see Ice Armor have FrR removed and instead make it increase spellpower by X% (or X% of int/spi) and possibly have Mage Armor resistance changed to a 5-10% chance to reflect instead (With an additional 2.5/5% improved). Not stacking with imp Fire/Frost Ward ofc.

That would make all Armors useful for both PvP and PvE and all depending on playstyle and opponents.

For PvP:
Ice Armor would be useful against melee, decreasing their damage severely.
Mage Armor would be useful against caster setups such as Warlock+Priest. Also providing utility for longer fights.
Molten Armor would be your anti-burst armor, thinking Rogue/Druid or Shaman/Mage combo setups.

For PvE:
Ice Armor would be the preferred choice for players with plenty of crit already or with not enough crit multipliers to make good use of Molten Armor.
Mage Armor would provide a bonus to your longetivity, both by increasing mana regen as well as reduce the damage taken by AoE
Molten Armor would remain the same, giving crit, which could be upped to keep on par with the other armors.

I think it's fairly balanced, although the Mage Armor resistance change could use some work though.
Note that I specificly didn't try to make an Armor for each playing niche (e.g. PvP, solo PvE & raiding), but rather for specific playstyles. This is the opposite of the 2 Warlock Armors, where one provides both DPS and mana regen, while the other provides a lot of survivability.

About debuff synergizing:
What I'ld love to see if a buff to Arcane Barrage such as "increases the amount of charges on Focus Mind/Magic by 10-20, up to a maximum of 50-80"(Numbers only as example). This would provide Arcane specs a nice boost as they will no longer need to waste GCD and tons of mana every X seconds to refresh Focus Mind. It also provides more reactive DPSing because you will need to adapt your cycles to keep the buff up.
For Burnout I'ld love to see the added effect of "your Fireball, Pyroblast and Fire Blast crits have a 20/.../100% chance to refresh the duration of your Fire spell debuffs on the target". Note that besides the Scorch debuff, this would also work for Dragon's Breath & Blastwave debuffs, making it more utility added onto your casts. I was going to go for hits rather then crits, but the Ignite would be too OP with it really. I also made it specificly for Fire-spells only to counter the possible Frostfire abuse.


I know it's not as "reactive" as some people would like, but on the other hand, there are already enough suggestions around for that imo. The Brain Freeze giving Ice Lance bonus suggestion is one, I heard another making the Firestarter proc spells an X% chance to refresh the CD on those 2 AoE spells instead and so on.