[Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion - Page 191

Cwealm · 08/14/08, 11:50 PM

Originally Posted by MetallicaRulez0

I'll agree with an above poster and say this is most certainly not true. If you've been following the theoretical numbers for various other classes (Fire Locks and BM Hunters specifically), you'll see we're pretty far behind with no real utility to make up for this gap. Focus Magic is far too mana intensive as a 50 charge effect, and getting Winter's Chill requires a pretty substantial DPS loss (though you also get a pocket shadow priest in the form of WE if you're this deep in the tree). I personally have already informed my guild leader that unless I see a little more promise out of the Fire or Frostfire builds, I'll be rerolling Hunter for WotLK.

The above wasn't meant to be any sort of "QQ Mages suck" type post, but I guess it sorta reads that way. I'm just disappointed that the class I've been playing for over 3 years is in such a sorry state.

We are talking about downranking spells, which no mage does in pve. The concerns about downranking are most assuredly pvp related.

Saruk · 08/15/08, 12:41 AM

Originally Posted by MetallicaRulez0

I'll agree with an above poster and say this is most certainly not true. If you've been following the theoretical numbers for various other classes (Fire Locks and BM Hunters specifically), you'll see we're pretty far behind with no real utility to make up for this gap. Focus Magic is far too mana intensive as a 50 charge effect, and getting Winter's Chill requires a pretty substantial DPS loss (though you also get a pocket shadow priest in the form of WE if you're this deep in the tree). I personally have already informed my guild leader that unless I see a little more promise out of the Fire or Frostfire builds, I'll be rerolling Hunter for WotLK.

The above wasn't meant to be any sort of "QQ Mages suck" type post, but I guess it sorta reads that way. I'm just disappointed that the class I've been playing for over 3 years is in such a sorry state.

Although the original argument was to do with PvP v PvE downranking, I don't agree with this at all. Bilz has said they know there ended up being a significant no-intended difference in Lock and Mage dps end game. They know the mage class needs buffs and have so far looked to give us spells that are heading in the right general direction.

I think they will come through. There is significant mage lore in this expansion as well. And tbh, it's just a fun class to play. I keep coming back to my mage even after lvling 4 other 70s.

Sancus · 08/15/08, 1:27 AM

Originally Posted by Tigole

we never intended

People make too much of a big deal of this. Literally the entire way the Hunter class plays is all emergent, and has been completely misunderstood by Blizzard for 4 years. That's probably the most significant example.

Half of the gameplay styles in the game were never intended. Blizzard can't simply just make arbitrary changes to turn random things back to "the way they intended" without taking into account the way the unintended things have shaped the game for all that time. For example, they've balanced rogues around the fact that you can stealth detect(that's why you can sap people from farther away than the aoe ability). If they don't intend "ae stealth detection", then logically they may need to remove that change to sap, and there are a million examples of them making compensatory changes to deal with things that they "never intended".

They have to deal with the cards they've been dealt, and every single change they make has unintended consequences. The downranking nerf means significant reduces in Mage capability in arena, and if they don't do things to compensate for those losses, then that will naturally result in Mages being worse off than they were in TBC.

I'm not saying that they aren't doing these things, but saying "Blizzard never intended X" is not a logical defense of a change. Blizzard's original intentions from 2007 or 2004 or 2002 or whenever aren't reasonable points of argument.

Mystiq · 08/15/08, 1:38 AM

Originally Posted by Sancus

For example, they've balanced rogues around the fact that you can stealth detect(that's why you can sap people from farther away than the aoe ability). If they don't intend "ae stealth detection", then logically they may need to remove that change to sap, and there are a million examples of them making compensatory changes to deal with things that they "never intended".

That's a fair point. I hope that gets removed because it felt like an unnecessary change and has just made Rogues far more annoying when Stealthed, giving them an easier time to gank.

Talbain · 08/15/08, 2:18 AM

Obviously reversions will be made, but I'm glad that they've decided to make downranking obsolete. It's always felt like a thorn in the caster's side and in the long run it gives rise to more interesting gameplay mechanics since you're not trying to balance around hundreds of ranks of spells, but one rank only.

cerebes · 08/15/08, 2:24 AM

Originally Posted by manly

Manly listed all pertinent mana changes

Focus Magic - 535

Could someone in Beta check to see if this is the cost of max rank Focus Magic or not? The reason I ask is from what I had read the maximum rank of FM cost 1000 mana. If this is max rank and costs 535 then combined with some TC done quite awhile back when FM first came into the talents (TC at the time I thought said it could be upwards of 10-15k rDPS) this would be a small improvement. I could be wrong on the potential rDPS, and it is still annoying to cast every 10-12s more or less.

Edit: MMO-Champion is still quoting 1000 mana for top rank at 80. I'm sure this is because of Manly using the lower level version. My fault, sorry for the derailment, and feel free to delete.

Roywyn · 08/15/08, 3:47 AM

Originally Posted by aikiwoce

From what I heard, the first wand "attack" triggers the GCD, but every wand "attack" after that doesn't. It's more like a channeled spell now. You pay for the GCD at the beginning, but if you want to cancel it and cast something else you can.

The bigger change is that it works like a normal GCD now, and doesn't trigger a GCD on spells that are off GCD.

In short: Wanding doesn't lock out Counterspell any more.

Twin · 08/15/08, 4:00 AM

one good fix would to make it so that you only use the full mana cost of a channeled spell if you actually channeled the spell for its entire duration. So if you pop blizzard for a quick seconds trying to fish out a rogue or put someone in combat around a piller you only use a fraction of the total mana needed to cast the spell because you didn't quickly cast it. This way they can do away with downranking while not completely gimping this aspect of caster pvp. After all though if I didn't cast blizzard or rain of fire, or whatever for the ful duration of the spell why should I expend the same mana as if I did. I don't know what the fraction would be but it could easily be balanced. But as far as arcane explosion not sure how to fix that without having to rely on downranking.

RpgWizard · 08/15/08, 4:21 AM

Originally Posted by Twin

one good fix would to make it so that you only use the full mana cost of a channeled spell if you actually channeled the spell for its entire duration. So if you pop blizzard for a quick seconds trying to fish out a rogue or put someone in combat around a piller you only use a fraction of the total mana needed to cast the spell because you didn't quickly cast it. This way they can do away with downranking while not completely gimping this aspect of caster pvp. After all though if I didn't cast blizzard or rain of fire, or whatever for the ful duration of the spell why should I expend the same mana as if I did. I don't know what the fraction would be but it could easily be balanced. But as far as arcane explosion not sure how to fix that without having to rely on downranking.

I was thinking something like this would be great to implement when they implemented the constant energy update mechanic. It would work just like that, with mana, energy, and rage regenerating every 1/20th of a second or whatever it is, but in reverse for channeled spells. It would drain mana as it was being channeled. Of course, perhaps its Blizzard's intent that channeled spells have that drawback, if only most mage channeled spells were worth using outside of blizzard for a few seconds.

Dersuuzala · 08/15/08, 9:31 AM

Originally Posted by RpgWizard

I was thinking something like this would be great to implement when they implemented the constant energy update mechanic. It would work just like that, with mana, energy, and rage regenerating every 1/20th of a second or whatever it is, but in reverse for channeled spells. It would drain mana as it was being channeled. Of course, perhaps its Blizzard's intent that channeled spells have that drawback, if only most mage channeled spells were worth using outside of blizzard for a few seconds.

It was like that before(vanilla), but was changed to full mana as you start channeling.

itchytf · 08/15/08, 11:49 AM

Originally Posted by RpgWizard

I was thinking something like this would be great to implement when they implemented the constant energy update mechanic. It would work just like that, with mana, energy, and rage regenerating every 1/20th of a second or whatever it is, but in reverse for channeled spells. It would drain mana as it was being channeled. Of course, perhaps its Blizzard's intent that channeled spells have that drawback

Heh yeah cause channelled spells don't already have the drawback of being easily interrupted and rooting the caster. Not to mention blizzard also can't keep up with a moving target and frost spells have no anti pushback.

Revealing rogues was blizzard's only proper use in PvP, unless you really fancied talenting it and slowing down flag carriers in WSG. Now it's pretty much useless.

Frah · 08/15/08, 12:01 PM

Have not noticed anyone ask or mention if it is passable to juggle mobs with well timed living bombs? I was thinking something like 1 mage casts on a mob and a 2nd mage casts 1 second later on a different mob near by. Also is it passable then to knock up while they are at the peak of flight to knock up further?

I so hope so since the fun and games in pvp and pve with these ability's would be awesome.

Prom · 08/15/08, 4:02 PM

Originally Posted by Frah

Have not noticed anyone ask or mention if it is passable to juggle mobs with well timed living bombs? I was thinking something like 1 mage casts on a mob and a 2nd mage casts 1 second later on a different mob near by. Also is it passable then to knock up while they are at the peak of flight to knock up further?

I so hope so since the fun and games in pvp and pve with these ability's would be awesome.

I'm away on vacation so I can't really test it.
If I'm not mistaken, didn't someone say that the explosion timing is random now, i.e. it can happen mid way through the bomb and not at the end, and again if I'm not mistaken the "knock up" is incoorporated into the explosion, therefore making this juggling experiment impossible.

[DRF]Solmyr · 08/15/08, 5:23 PM

WoW Forums -> Chains of ice = Diminishing returns in PvP.

Because the debuff starts at 0% movement speed for a second, it feels a little like a root, but mechanically it is not a root nor a freeze. Apologies to the Frost mages, but I'm not sure it's a great idea to have so much synergy between two classes. That was the sort of thing that lead to warlocks and shadow priests cackling over +Shadow buffs and pushing mages out of raids.

I'm assuming this means an end to synergy between the shadow casters? It's like they knew all the time and didn't care.

Zeldyrr · 08/15/08, 5:59 PM

Originally Posted by [DRF]Solmyr

I'm assuming this means an end to synergy between the shadow casters? It's like they knew all the time and didn't care.

This depends on the "they". The team in charge of BC was afraid of making changes. The team in charge of WotLK seems to be afraid of NOT making sweeping changes. People keep saying "X is always going to be true, but cause Blizzard will never change Y" and then the devs come along and totally revamp Y.

Case in point: downranking spells. A year ago Blizzard said that downranking of spells was unintentional but there was nothing they could do about it. Today? They don't just "look at" downranking, they pretty much totally remove it AND state clearly that they will change whatever else is necessary to make the removal of downranking sane for healers, pvp, etc. They have already followed that up saying they will consider giving priests a baby heal to replace downranked flash heals.

I do think this iteration of the dev team is going to try very hard to not have crazy scaling in WotLK. They want varied raids with all the specs of all the classes participating. We'll have to wait to see how they do, but I'm excited as opposed to panicked at this point.

MetallicaRulez0 · 08/15/08, 6:29 PM

It is pretty nice to have a dev team that's not afraid of changing things. It's a lot better than the 'wait and see' kind of team we've had throughout BC that lead to the ridiculousness of Warlocks, Shaman, and now Hunters. I'm just hopeful that the eventual "DPS pass" they keep talking about balances things correctly. Until then, back to the Hunter!

Talbain · 08/15/08, 6:56 PM

Originally Posted by Zeldyrr

This depends on the "they". The team in charge of BC was afraid of making changes. The team in charge of WotLK seems to be afraid of NOT making sweeping changes. People keep saying "X is always going to be true, but cause Blizzard will never change Y" and then the devs come along and totally revamp Y.

Case in point: downranking spells. A year ago Blizzard said that downranking of spells was unintentional but there was nothing they could do about it. Today? They don't just "look at" downranking, they pretty much totally remove it AND state clearly that they will change whatever else is necessary to make the removal of downranking sane for healers, pvp, etc. They have already followed that up saying they will consider giving priests a baby heal to replace downranked flash heals.

I do think this iteration of the dev team is going to try very hard to not have crazy scaling in WotLK. They want varied raids with all the specs of all the classes participating. We'll have to wait to see how they do, but I'm excited as opposed to panicked at this point.

At the very least I'm sure everyone will be plenty confused when Wrath comes out. I suppose the question is whether the changes are for the better or the worse.

More on the Mage--does anyone have a video of the new wanding functionality?

Lurker · 08/15/08, 7:51 PM

More on the Mage--does anyone have a video of the new wanding functionality?

wanding.avi - FileFront.com

Basically, you pay the initial shoot speed time (1.5s for my wand) and that's it.

◊ Vontre · 08/15/08, 9:40 PM

Originally Posted by MetallicaRulez0

It is pretty nice to have a dev team that's not afraid of changing things. It's a lot better than the 'wait and see' kind of team we've had throughout BC that lead to the ridiculousness of Warlocks, Shaman, and now Hunters. I'm just hopeful that the eventual "DPS pass" they keep talking about balances things correctly. Until then, back to the Hunter!

They only do this during expansion cycles, you do realize.... they haven't changed a single thing in the live game. o.O

Originally Posted by [DRF]Solmyr

WoW Forums -> Chains of ice = Diminishing returns in PvP.

I'm assuming this means an end to synergy between the shadow casters? It's like they knew all the time and didn't care.

Fire warlocks are better anyway .... except for very very early BC when shadow weaving was 15%, which is what I assume he was talking about.

[DRF]Solmyr · 08/16/08, 1:36 AM

Originally Posted by Vontre

Fire warlocks are better anyway .... except for very very early BC when shadow weaving was 15%, which is what I assume he was talking about.

Fire Warlocks are better now for end game raiding? Most of the WWS's I've seen show SB spam...

Praest · 08/16/08, 7:05 AM

I don't think we can expect Living Bomb to stay as it currently is, because right now from my tests this morning this is the most overpowered spell in the arsenal, as long as you are within range. It will blow up 4 times per cast if you are next to the mob, which on my quite badly geared mage and level 1 LB means ~8k damage on a single target / application + whatever it ignites for. And not to mention, everything within range of the target will also explode.

All my tests so far show that as long as you stay out of meleerange, only the last tick will explode. If you are melee, it will explode all of them (and for some reasons it seems to crit on the explosion quite much and not trigger MoE nor eat Combustion charges).

I do however wish I could play with this broken version in MH with a decent paladin tank.

EDIT: Roywyn, my response was to the guy a few posts back saying the explosion was random, although I did not make that entirely clear now that I've reread my post.

Roywyn · 08/16/08, 7:23 AM

Originally Posted by Praest

I don't think we can expect Living Bomb to stay as it currently is, because right now from my tests this morning this is the most overpowered spell in the arsenal, as long as you are within range. It will blow up 4 times per cast if you are next to the mob, which on my quite badly geared mage and level 1 LB means ~8k damage on a single target / application + whatever it ignites for. And not to mention, everything within range of the target will also explode.

All my tests so far show that as long as you stay out of meleerange, only the last tick will explode. If you are melee, it will explode all of them (and for some reasons it seems to crit on the explosion quite much and not trigger MoE nor eat Combustion charges).

I do however wish I could play with this broken version in MH with a decent paladin tank.

Uhm, we know that, and I think everyone assumes that this behaviour will be fixed.
Nobody TCs around having LB explode every tick due to a bug.

Just like no one expects Totem of Wrath to stack in the future.
Because, well ... http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/1...8171054iq4.jpg

Gediablo · 08/16/08, 4:10 PM

Originally Posted by cerebes

Edit: MMO-Champion is still quoting 1000 mana for top rank at 80. I'm sure this is because of Manly using the lower level version. My fault, sorry for the derailment, and feel free to delete.

True. I just checked in game. Rank 7 is still 1000 mana

Tyrian · 08/16/08, 6:00 PM

*edit - double post. Oh well, Ill say something here instead too*

This depends on the "they". The team in charge of BC was afraid of making changes. The team in charge of WotLK seems to be afraid of NOT making sweeping changes.

I think your naive if you believe this comment.

Its not that they are 'afraid' of making changes, its that the developers design mechanics for an expansion and try to 'make it work' and 'stick with it' as much as possible after its released. Redesigning something (eg, Raid Wide buffs and class-raid spot representation) could be alot more work than simply applying a bandaid fix thats deemed 'acceptable' until an expansion where a more throrough review can take place.

And this is exactly what they did with TBC's problems with WOTLK in mind. Its obvious they would have known for many months about LW Drum Chaining, Warlock DPS Scaling, Mage VS Warlock raid-spot-worth problems etc - yet they stuck with the basic TBC blueprints - even if there were issues identified - and left the big changes until WOTLK development now.

Giving a unified COE pre-wotlk is a notable exception.

Clearly they are happy to make drastic changes, but between expansions is a bad time to do so - as it could throw out balance in other areas of the game and create more holes that also need man-hours to fix.

Tyrian · 08/16/08, 6:14 PM

This thread is way too big and cluttered now with outdated and mis-informed information backdating to the point where nobody even was in beta to understand how spells work.

I think itd be much more helpful if a prominant mage poster started a new thread and made the first post a Permanent Reference point thats constantly updated. Items to include would be:

- DPS performance values for all given specs (like Rowyn's post here = http://elitistjerks.com/846078-post4020.html),
- summary on important information new-mages to EJ will want to know with regards to WOTLK (EG, How does frostfire bolt work? What talents affect it? How do misses/resists/partial resists work in WOTLK?)
- summary on each talent trees current Strength/weaknesses and viability in a raid setting, identifying key talents.
- review of important changes in WOTLK that concern mages (Eg, mana ticks, raid-buff consolidation, what talents other classes have that a WOTLK mage will need to familiarise themself with)

Finding that information in this 190+ page thread is stupid, it should be on the first page - updated constantly - by a prominant theorycrafter and active poster. I noticed this today when I was trying to decide on a WOTLK spec and struggled to find the information here in a clear+concise way.

Ok Manly/Vontre/Lhivera/Rowyn etc, start it up. You are the most active posters here anyway :P