[Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion - Page 176

kros · 08/11/08, 10:35 AM

Originally Posted by Tharia

You do know that you can easily move out of noxious poison and get a whole (actually two over the course of a fight) invis through while myst is in the air and never really need to care about aggro?

BTT, I actually would like bringing a buff as long as it is convenient to do it and I don't have to spend half of my time or mana doing this.

Yeah I do, actually. But anyway that is not the point - since warlocks and hunters can do the same anytime, not just right after the air phase to reset their threat. Mages have little 'real' utility in most of SWP encounters except Kalecgos decursing.

Fireflash38 · 08/11/08, 10:46 AM

Another thing which comes to my mind:
Wasn't there a post in the one of the TC threads, that for the dmg of a spell, the mages buffs are counted when the spell leaves the mages hands(spell dmg trinkets with 0,5 sec. left, combustion, etc.), but the (de-)buffs on the target count when the spell lands?
If the later is true, Ignite dmg can't be calculated when the spell leaves the mages hands, because potentiel Scorch, CoE, etc. buffs have quite some impact on Ignite dmg.

Debuffs count when the spell is cast, not when it lands. I have gotten shatter combos on druids after they have shifted, because they shifted after the spells are in the air.

And it is easily double checked, just have a priest dispel frost nova after an Ice Lance is already in the air.

Frenzi · 08/11/08, 12:13 PM

Originally Posted by kadgar

(On Brain Freeze)

One shouldn't forget that the instant costs no mana, so it's a manasaver as well.

Not to be too picky but I doubt mana will be an issue for a mage who is that deep in frost. With the changes to mana costs for spells, classes able to work as mana batteries, changes to chain chugging pots a mage will have to be able to continuously be able to cast for the duration of any fight. Frost has always had the best DPM, unless I have missed something I think this is still the case. I remember raiding as frost and mana just wasn't an issue even at T5, now obviously that isn't in WotLK but I can't see any serious mana usage from a frost mage in the spells or talents either

The whole talent is just wrong, why would a deep frost mage suddenly spurt out a fireball. It would make more sense if the talent wasn't so deep so it could be used in an elementalist spec, 0/18/53 I don't really count as elementalist. Even though it would work I am pretty certain you can spend the three points in other areas of the frost tree for more effect.

Frenzi · 08/11/08, 12:18 PM

I haven't seen these changes brought up yet:

* Arcane Blast changed. Each time you cast Arcane Blast the damage is increased by 25% (instead of 15%) and mana cost by 75%. Stacks up to 3 times and lasts 3 secs.
* Living Bomb changed : The target becomes a Living Bomb, taking 1380 Fire damage over 12 sec. After 12 sec or when the spell is dispelled, the target explodes dealing 690 Fire damage to all enemies within 10 yards and knocking all targets up in the air. This spell can only affect one target at a time. (1010 Mana, 35 yd range, Instant cast)
* Deep Freeze casting time changed from 1.5 second to instant.

Living bomb looks pretty fun now, sort of SoC crossed with Unstable Affliction

Iliyan · 08/11/08, 12:49 PM

Instant Deep freeze is looking good for pvp, is the amazing damage changed?

manly · 08/11/08, 12:52 PM

Originally Posted by Alvira

Yep. Players should be brought because they are good, not because they bring raid buff X or debuff Y. Having essential buffs that are spec and class defining to raids encourages prima dona behaviour. Like, hey, I am the protection tank and I should be the only MT, the raid needs me! Or the raid leader going "we need 3 shammys or we can't do this boss".

Mages declined in numbers in TBC because their DPS was lower relative to other DPS classes, most notably locks for the majority of TBC raiding. You could be a really skillful player, and you would still end up on par in DPS with a lock that was just spamming shadowbolt. Furthermore, we needed so much more baby sitting because we had lower health, plus mana support. Having little synergy and raid utility just made a bad problem worse. But I don't believe it was the main contributor to the decline in mages in raids. It boiled down to just the DPS.

You could argue that beyond the third or fourth lock, it wouldn't have made any difference. But ask a raid leader if he could replace all the mages in his raid with locks. See what kind of response you would get. I know some probably entertained that idea secretly. And it was due in major part to locks' higher DPS, on top of everything else.

If you have 1 mage and 1 warlock in a raid, your 3rd player will invariably favor a warlock. It also affects recruitment. You can't dumb down the issue and say player skills will decide who gets raid spots, besides, the logic doesn't work if all your players are skilled.

Originally Posted by Roywyn

3) Fire without WC loses a lot of control and loses the effect of WC for the rest of the raid for another 4% personal gain.
* I don't see anything wrong there.

I simply do not agree. Currently in TBC frost doesn't bring anything (more crit to frost...). The dps difference is ~5% to fire. This is the cost you pay for survivability. Now you want to tell me that a spec that provides 10% more crit to all other specs, 10% more dps to all other specs and 3% mana regen every 5s half the time shouldn't cost a further penalty? They give 10% more crit and the mana regen to other specs, this is what the extra dps loss should come from, from that utility. The 4% is just survivability, the extra utility is unaccounted for.

Dorrinal · 08/11/08, 1:07 PM

Originally Posted by manly

I simply do not agree. Currently in TBC frost doesn't bring anything (more crit to frost...). The dps difference is ~5% to fire. This is the cost you pay for survivability. Now you want to tell me that a spec that provides 10% more crit to all other specs, 10% more dps to all other specs and 3% mana regen every 5s half the time shouldn't cost a further penalty? They give 10% more crit and the mana regen to other specs, this is what the extra dps loss should come from, from that utility. The 4% is just survivability, the extra utility is unaccounted for.

Now look at it from the perspective of a frost mage in a small group (5- and 10-man instances). Since there are fewer people to benefit from the frostie's utility, his relatively low personal dps makes him a liability. To me that suggests keeping relative dps as it stands and removing some of Frost's excess utility: take another look at the imp WE talent, for example.

manly · 08/11/08, 1:10 PM

Fire sucks on 5-10mans because ignite doesn't gets to do its damage. Delayed damage is not good on mobs that die fast -- just ask any affliction lock.

Vontre · 08/11/08, 1:11 PM

Hey guys you can chill out now it turns out fire's dps jumped about 200 points after I loosened up the code on when Living Bomb was allowed to cast.

Praest · 08/11/08, 1:12 PM

Originally Posted by Dorrinal

Now look at it from the perspective of a frost mage in a small group (5- and 10-man instances). Since there are fewer people to benefit from the frostie's utility, his relatively low personal dps makes him a liability. To me that suggests keeping relative dps as it stands and removing some of Frost's excess utility: take another look at the imp WE talent, for example.

In a 5/10-man, having that huge amount of control, free mp5 and survivability is worth even more, at least in my opinion. I would go as far as to say that the DPS aspect is mostly irrelevant in smaller content because they're not as focused on min/max as a 25man tend to be.

You're never a liability if you can, by yourself, keep 3 mobs fully controlled for a real amount of time while screwups are sorted. I would go as far as to say that the control element of the frost mage makes him a valuable asset of a 5man whereas a firemages dot(s) and rampup time make him the liability.

Edit: Beaten to the punch

Lgs · 08/11/08, 1:13 PM

Ya, frost is clearly better than fire in 5 mans. No ramp up with scorch, better survivability, split threat with elemental (tanks tend to have less threat, maybe no salv), etc, etc.

Lhivera · 08/11/08, 1:14 PM

Originally Posted by Vontre

Hey guys you can chill out now it turns out fire's dps jumped about 200 points after I loosened up the code on when Living Bomb was allowed to cast.

What's the fancy hash-equipped link to your latest test stats?

Copernicus · 08/11/08, 1:16 PM

Originally Posted by Dorrinal

Now look at it from the perspective of a frost mage in a small group (5- and 10-man instances). Since there are fewer people to benefit from the frostie's utility, his relatively low personal dps makes him a liability. To me that suggests keeping relative dps as it stands and removing some of Frost's excess utility: take another look at the imp WE talent, for example.

Frost gains utility in 5/10 mans from the ability to slow or freeze mobs. Now, the situation can change in WotLK, but it was possible in many 5-man instances (and probably 10-mans if it was important) for a Frost mage to "off-tank" a mob with slows and frost novas.

10-man boss fights are probably going to be the biggest balancing act for WotLK. Since they will be progression content and every spec needs to be supported (without overpowering them for 5-mans, 25-mans, or PvP) I'm expecting most of the tweaking to happen there.

Flamingcloud · 08/11/08, 1:16 PM

Originally Posted by manly

I simply do not agree. Currently in TBC frost doesn't bring anything (more crit to frost...). The dps difference is ~5% to fire. This is the cost you pay for survivability. Now you want to tell me that a spec that provides 10% more crit to all other specs, 10% more dps to all other specs and 3% mana regen every 5s half the time shouldn't cost a further penalty? They give 10% more crit and the mana regen to other specs, this is what the extra dps loss should come from, from that utility. The 4% is just survivability, the extra utility is unaccounted for.

What classes extra utility is accounted for?

Almost every class is getting more utility, and almost every hybrid class is having its personal dps buffed. Even if you deal 60% the damage of the top dps, you still out dps their raid damage if you bring even a +3% raid damage buff(ala ret paladins). Utility is so blatantly overpowered right now and I think that raid buff consolidation thread is the problem. Utility should have been scaled so that buff + dmg = no more than the damage of a person who wasn't providing any buffs. Moonkin, arms warriors, ele shaman, and ret paladins were all fairly well balanced without receiving both more utility and more personal dps.

Instead you have tons of nutty new utility abilities like +6% dmg totem of wrath, and +10% spell dmg demonic pact.

Lhivera · 08/11/08, 1:19 PM

Regarding the whole Frost vs. Fire DPS vs. Utility thing, the ideal situation is:

Frost DPS = Fire DPS
Imp. WE + Winter's Chill = Imp. Scorch + Crazy AOE Machine

The problem that arises being that it's actually:
Imp. WE + Winter's Chill + Imp. Scorch > Imp. Scorch + Crazy AOE Machine

manly · 08/11/08, 1:20 PM

What I fear the most about living bomb is the very possible 'impact' on ignite (read: it could bug both ways, give or eat ignites). Not to mention the mana consumption, although that shouldn't be too bad if you only activate during cooldowns.

Vontre · 08/11/08, 1:20 PM

I love you guys who prance around like balancing raid synergies is the simplest thing in the world. It's cute.

Anyway, here.

http://www.magegraf.com/expansion/in...9963848adfebe9

manly · 08/11/08, 1:29 PM

Originally Posted by Flamingcloud

What classes extra utility is accounted for?

Almost every class is getting more utility, and almost every hybrid class is having its personal dps buffed. Even if you deal 60% the damage of the top dps, you still out dps their raid damage if you bring even a +3% raid damage buff(ala ret paladins). Utility is so blatantly overpowered right now and I think that raid buff consolidation thread is the problem. Utility should have been scaled so that buff + dmg = no more than the damage of a person who wasn't providing any buffs. Moonkin, arms warriors, ele shaman, and ret paladins were all fairly well balanced without receiving both more utility and more personal dps.

Instead you have tons of nutty new utility abilities like +6% dmg totem of wrath, and +10% spell dmg demonic pact.

Well, I can somewhat agree to the gist of what you're saying, but then, I will point out the obvious loophole that fire utility is not very desirable. (and neither arcane utility, although its not like arcane has much utility per se)

Fireflash38 · 08/11/08, 1:37 PM

Originally Posted by manly

I simply do not agree. Currently in TBC frost doesn't bring anything (more crit to frost...). The dps difference is ~5% to fire. This is the cost you pay for survivability. Now you want to tell me that a spec that provides 10% more crit to all other specs, 10% more dps to all other specs and 3% mana regen every 5s half the time shouldn't cost a further penalty? They give 10% more crit and the mana regen to other specs, this is what the extra dps loss should come from, from that utility. The 4% is just survivability, the extra utility is unaccounted for.

What extra survivability? In raids, there is almost no difference except ice barrier, and perhaps a second ice block. Ice barrier is a joke, and no one saves cold snap for a second ice block. And slows? Most raid mobs are immune, and being able to mostly solo the ones that aren't shouldn't have any affect in a raid that doesn't count on you soloing mobs. Frost's survivability is definitely not worth 4% difference.

The 10% crit is from WC, which I will give you is a huge amount of utility. The 10% damage though is only from scorch, which fire also provides and so shouldn't be included in your 'penalty.' If you do, then you would also have to penalize fire that amount as well.

The way most of your posts have been manly seem to imply a fire elitist view, that fire should be king dps no if's and's or but's. It is seen in your view of Arcane cycles and in your huge overestimation of frost's utility.

Personally, with the whole raid buffing thing, I think a good majority of the problems would be solved by making winter's chill only apply to frost spells again.

manly · 08/11/08, 1:44 PM

Extra survivability applies mostly to 5 mans. In raids, fire pay extra penalty with PWF.

If you don't like me arguing for fire spec, then I'll point out its not different than people arguing to buff other specs.

mako · 08/11/08, 1:45 PM

Originally Posted by Fireflash38

What extra survivability? In raids, there is almost no difference except ice barrier, and perhaps a second ice block. Ice barrier is a joke, and no one saves cold snap for a second ice block. And slows? Most raid mobs are immune, and being able to mostly solo the ones that aren't shouldn't have any affect in a raid that doesn't count on you soloing mobs. Frost's survivability is definitely not worth 4% difference.

The 10% crit is from WC, which I will give you is a huge amount of utility. The 10% damage though is only from scorch, which fire also provides and so shouldn't be included in your 'penalty.' If you do, then you would also have to penalize fire that amount as well.

The way most of your posts have been manly seem to imply a fire elitist view, that fire should be king dps no if's and's or but's. It is seen in your view of Arcane cycles and in your huge overestimation of frost's utility.

Personally, with the whole raid buffing thing, I think a good majority of the problems would be solved by making winter's chill only apply to frost spells again.

You seem to underestimate ice barrier, and player intelligence. Pushing progression on a fight where you could feasibly use two ice blocks, smart players can plan around saving cold snap for a second block if they feel it is significant.

Remember that frost also has lower mana consumption than fire, making it less of a liability in needing heavy support to sustain dps on long fights.

Lhivera · 08/11/08, 1:49 PM

Originally Posted by Vontre

I love you guys who prance around like balancing raid synergies is the simplest thing in the world. It's cute.

"Did you not notice, my friend, that I described only the outside of the pocket calculator?" --Isaac Asimov, to a friend who chided him for not patenting the idea of the pocket calculator he had used in one of his stories before the real thing was invented.

It's pretty easy to identify the results that would be desirable (which is what I was doing above); it's a whole other story to actually achieve those results, and I don't envy Blizzard the task. We've gone over various possible methods of solving the "Frost can bring Improved Scorch but Fire can't bring Winter's Chill" problem over the past few pages, and all of these possible answers carry significant problems. I frankly haven't got any idea how they can really fix it at this point.

Anyway, here.

http://www.magegraf.com/expansion/in...9963848adfebe9

So here's what I'm showing now:

4314: 51/20/0 (Brings 1 debuff)
4287: 0/51/20 (FFB) (Brings 1 debuff)
4090: 0/30/41 (FFB) (Brings 2 debuffs)
4053: 0/20/51 (Brings 2 debuffs and imp. WE)
3740: 2/58/11 (Brings 1 debuff)

I guess at this point we just have to hope they recognize this as a problem and have plans to deal with it in the tuning process.

ETA: My assumption is that a 0/0/71 Frost Mage would have slightly higher DPS than the 0/20/51 Frost Elementalist (assuming someone else was providing Improved Scorch), but not much higher, so he'd rank somewhere around 4100? While bringing a single debuff plus Imp. WE.)

Saruk · 08/11/08, 1:51 PM

Originally Posted by Fireflash38

Ice barrier is a joke, and no one saves cold snap for a second ice block

When I spec frost for the Illidan fight, always use Ice Barrier and always use CS for a second IB. I could probably come up with other examples but this comment is so far wrong it's not worth beating the dead horse.

manly · 08/11/08, 1:53 PM

Well, I just learned now that apparently all Vontre' simulations assume the 10% frost dmg buff from DKs exists. This is why 0/51/20 uses FFB instead of fireball. This would indeed heavily skew every numbers in such a way that all this page points are moot and N/A. I don't believe that 10% frost buff will make it live -- at least, nobody elses assumes its existance. Flatly put, that buff drives fireball out of the picture.

Fireflash38 · 08/11/08, 1:54 PM

Originally Posted by mako

You seem to underestimate ice barrier, and player intelligence. Pushing progression on a fight where you could feasibly use two ice blocks, smart players can plan around saving cold snap for a second block if they feel it is significant.

Remember that frost also has lower mana consumption than fire, making it less of a liability in needing heavy support to sustain dps on long fights.

I severely underestimate ice barrier. It costs a lot of mana which mages don't regen nearly as quickly. And for the mana cost it only absorbs around 1.5k (3k+ in WotLK, but aoe encounters in TBC take out 3k quickly enough).

Frost mages make a sacrifice already in DPS choosing to save coldsnap for a second ice block. Also, pushback is pretty big concern for both frost and arcane, which fire has an advantage there.

The main reason I see utility with frost is in 5mans, as manly said. But is blizzard really trying to balance a class around 5mans? You can either be lower DPS in raids, or slightly OP in 5man content.

What I really don't want to see in WotLK is pidgeonholing into 1-2 specs (like 0/18/53, or 11/18/28), like 2/48/11 and 10/48/3 were in TBC.