Perhaps you should take a better look at the warlock talents before you go off all "they got the better deal". At this junction in the game's development I'd 100% prefer mage over any other class. Locks are what's known to game players as "broken" but in the "borked" context, not the "imba" context.

And though chickens may appeal, maintain that they will always be a hybrid, thus they may perform well under any number of scenaria, but always with more limitation than a pure class like the mage. This follows the obviousness of "if a hybrid and a pure class are both equally good at what they do, why be pure when you can have more options".

That's not to say hybrids should be Jack of all trades, master of none; it's just to say they can't have the adaptability of pures. No agro-dump, not as many tools, not as many evasive tools (ice barrier/ward/shatter barrier/mana shield/ice block, blink, a number of aoe snares). Deffinitely worth playing, just not as adaptable in one discipline, gaining isntead cross-discipline adapatability.

As for Roots, it does tend to suffer from self-breaking and I do agree it's a fairly decent 5man CC, but it truly suffers from giving too much agro to the healer and being a liability to whoever happens to be near (absent-minded rogue, I'm looking at you. You too, blinking mage). I guess you'd ideally like a hunter to MD the thing as soon as it breaks, but then again if you're running with a Hunter you've got CC already.

Think you forgot to mention Sleep apart from Entangling Root and Cyclone. Also doesn't Entangling Roots last 27 seconds and castable from 30 yards? Not arguing that polymorphs got some advantages to the 3 druidspells, but utility based I would in wotlk prefer to have a 1xmage+1xmoonkin combo in a 10 or 25 man raid compared to 2xmage+0xmoonkin given the info I got atm.

It has always been the case, with the exception of early heroics (where DPS with no CC meant "no thanks") that in a 5-man you'd prefer not to stack two of anything. 5-mans benefit much more from the value of many different classes than raids do, where it's reasonable to expect at least one of everything; Running one-and-one means you can have an off-healer, have an innervate, get a MotW, have an attack-speed reducing AoE, gain a combat-rez... The list goes on. Stacking two mages, the only thing you gain is (1) minor dps increase as their self-buff stacks marginally faster. (2) another Poly (3) some synergy if WG goes ahead and stays as it is.

Not to mention, a druid may indeed CC two things at once, if shit hits fans. And probably tank a third as a chicken. A bit.

The current mage talents show a complete lack of ... ideas. I don't WANT to bring up warlocks, lord knows I'm already consistently behind them in dps this expansion and I'd rather not talk about it, but their talents in wotlk look unique and fun. Deathknights may be MY biggest mage buff if things don't change.

It is alpha, but I'm in total agreement that the PvE end of our mage changes are at best uninspired. I see other changes and talents for other classes (not just locks) and think "wow, that looks really cool." For us, the Frost and Arcane changes are utterly predictable (or in the case of Netherwind Presence, just plain boring), and the Fire changes just seem bad.

I realize a lot of other classes may in the same boat in this regard, but I'd like for my class to at least change a little bit with a new expansion. As it stands I'm still going to be DPSing the same way at level 80 as I was at level 60 (Fire spec), and after three+ years of this I was hoping for something new.

You don't need to bring up warlocks. Their WotLK alpha is in a much worse state than ours. ISB nerfed for DoTs and losing 1/4 of it's effect, 50 destro scaling badly, mixed fire and shadow talents, intent on making them alternate SB and Incin, but due to Sac making the idea pointless... The list goes on. Fantastic talents to buff the Imp, yet the imp remains as reliable as a chocolate oven in it's longevity/endurance. Soul Link nerf, MD nerf... I don't want to go into depth because it's not relevant to the thread, but bear in mind: When you look at talents it's easy to be wooed into a false sense of "I wish I had that" when in actual fact it's exceptionally hard to establish how good it is from their perspective.

Just a few months ago we had some mages over in the Lock thread going ape-shit over "OMG don't you GET how POWERFUL 30% REGEN WHILE CASTING IS?" being the consummation of idiocy and not realizing that just because a mage wets his pants for 30% means fuck-all to a lock, who devours mana at three times the rate a mage does and Taps more than a mana-pot. 200mp5, while casting at 840mp5 means a lot less than it does when casting at a firemage's >744mp5, with a return of 140 mana on 40% of the spells, and a possibly 10% of the spells being free.

Trust me gentlemen, the grass is not greener for the locks.

As for a "lack of ideas" on the mage tree, I differ hugely; We're full of new ideas, we're just not sure (1) how they work (2) if they're/will be any good. You "feel" we're lacking ideas because you don't see anything from just the leaked FFA notes that you can apply to your raiding now, and thus don't persieve any difference.

Living Bomb, World in Flames and Hot Streak, along with imp. Flamestrike make for one of the most explosive possible AoE scenaria we could immagine. At last a talent that lets you surpass the AoE cap significantly.

Netherwind and Barrage, both introducing massive complexity and interest in Arcane; Arcane always was the cycle-rotating spec. Now it (probably) will gain even more reactive-playing

The only thing I can classify as "unoriginal" is the frost tree. Chilled to the bone makes me yawn, imp WE is so boring it's unreal and WG I have mixed feelings about. It looks too gimmicky; I know it's exactly what we want, and I'll probably spec frost just for it, but still, it's an inelegant solution. "We know you -can't- use your most powerful talent, so here's one that -pretends- you can". Though, with Frostbite and WG farming will be totally sick.


Edit: jarlyn, the only thing that I really said "wow looks cool" to was the two Moonkin talents. To which I then said "getting nerf" and they did. Now they look "good". That, Disco-priests's manaback and perhaps fury-warr's instant-slam trick will get my nod of aproval too, but honestly very little struck me as overpoweringly amazing.

I saw good design in action in Death's Embrace (affliction's Molten Fury), Leap Attack (WRU DiabloII LOD?) and re-working SP crit mechanics. But I was expecting as much.

Thing with hybrids compared to mages is the fact they are and most likely will be MORE desired than a simple class.
Being desired in raids, 5mans or 10 mans or PVP is what is the key for me.

Versatility, being able to fill 3 roles its what keeps hybrids so fantastic in my opinion. If one of the roles is less desired at point x, you switch to role B instead of role A and so on.


I don't know how many mages here played a warrior tank or even a druid, but from my perspective when i tank no matter of gear, CC is the biggest overrated thing in this game. It just splits good tanks from bad ones. Even back than in early heroics before all nerfs, i've been zerging through instances without CC mobs even if i had it available. Its just faster. And yes im talking here about even a pre nerfed timed SH run for SSC attument, and no i didnt have 'the gear' for it as many would say seeing it, but never wiped.
For sure, some pugs require some CC but i usually get rid of such ppl before they even enter instance.
If i could choose i'd not let any class have a CC ability available in any instance beside maybe PVP.

Back on being desired topic, we can agree mages won't change into hybrid anytime soon (who knows?), so the plan is to make the class being desired as much others are. If we succed in all aspects through out for all classes for both pvp and every pve aspect we could maybe finnally play a much more enjoyable game.

Well, from my perspective, there is a difference between making a class more interesting vs making it more powerful. Its easy to make a class more powerful. Change the digits and numbers applicable for their spells, and their talents, and suddenly, the top line DPS of a class will change dramatically.

But does it make a class any more interesting to play? Say they give fire spec a ton more crits, and made the fireball spell more powerful relative to other spces or classes in WOLTK. Wow, so mages can now top DPS meters. But yet, what are we doing? We are still going to be spamming fireballs as firespec.

And frost specs gets to spam more frostbolts. Arcane is probably the most interesting, with the most variety added. But the other two specs are uninspiring. Maybe a new mage spell hasn't been put in yet, but at this stage, its just more big numbers at the end of old spells.

The gameplay of mages simply didn't change, and that is getting old ater 3 over years. They really tried a lot more to introduce new mechanics in TBC. We got spellsteal, invis, ice lance and arcane blast. That's 4 new spells with new mechanics compared to original wow. There might have been some flaws in implementation, but it was new. And when I originally first heard about these new spells, I was really excited.

What new spells are they giving to mages in WOTLK that is going to be very interesting? And that's the difference between interesting vs powerful. Making us more powerful is easy. Every class will be getting more powerful in the expansion. The key question is, are we getting anything new? So far, all I am seeing is shatter shield.

I don't want to look forward to just playing a mage with stronger fireballs or frostbolts come wotlk for another 2 years. I can already do that now with raid epics.

I'd agree with you on the deempasis of the CC.

I would also see one of your runs though Magister's Terrace Heroic without CC

I am aware you could probably do it with a resist tank, but that's far an beyond a normal group composition. MgT by far was designed to be tanked by a DK imho... everything that does significant damage does it though magic.

All I am saying is - for purposes of 5 man - 10 man and even 25 man - a competent druid working a little harder than a mage, can replace mage's CC. It shouldn't be taken as an invasion of mage's divine right to be best CCer in game - just as being best AOE'er in game - these are side jobs. Mage's main job is to be a DD class... and currently a warlock is far and beyond mages abilities to be best DD. A druid will also never be best at DD - but that is not classes intention.

It means no more "LF1M Mage only" shit that is common on my server for MgT. It means in raids that mages sole reason to be taken to raids won't be "o shit - we need 3 sheeps at some point".

Have done MgT with a prot warrior holding agro on everything with just spell reflect

I make prot warriors solo the AoE packs before the 2nd boss.

Do you count frost nova used to set up a shatter combo as CC? If not, then I can honestly say I've ran it without CC. After you've learned the pulls well enough you don't need to CC anything since it just slows down the killing. Of course you still have to have a group composition capable of doing that but it's not impossible to come up with it. Prot warrior (really is the best tank if the player knows what he's doing), mage, lock, priest/resto shaman, ele shaman makes up an unbelievably strong group that can destroy heroic MgT. It basically just comes down to bursting down the mage guards so you don't get jacked by their aoe stuns.

Even with S1 quality gear you can literaly 1 shot a mob before actuall pull. Thats always 1 mob less. Than u need top 2-3 GCD from each of 3 dpsers to finish next.

But lets not move this thread into how to tank and do MGT without CC. Its possible and its easy.

CoC / Nova / Blastwave / DB LoS kiting casters for the win.

The difference between good mage and bad mage is simple especially in 5 mans. Your cc is not coming from polymorph but controling all mobs with ALL OTHER ABILITIES. Polymorph < Rest abilities.

The warlock changes initially look good in concept, but they just don't work as planned.

- Affliction loses as much from the ISB change as it gains from the new talents that increase its DOTs. Its only DPS increases come from increases in the number of Shadow Bolts it will cast -- and since it's not very efficient with Shadow Bolts, that also increases its time spent Life Tapping or Dark Pacting.

- Destruction's just a mess. Several changes are aimed squarely at breaking DS/Destro, but running DS/Destro with a sacrificed Imp and casting Fire spells is still going to produce the highest DPS by a significant margin. And while I haven't actually mapped out a full fight yet, it sure looks to me as if even DS/Destro Fire is going to fall well behind a deep Fire Mage when he starts life tapping.

- Demonology is the only spec that looks like it might work out as planned, and that's as a group-buffing utility spec thanks to Demonic Pact. I doubt it's going to work as well as Beastmastery does, unless Beastmastery is going to be rebalanced to be lower DPS than Marksmanship when the new talents come out for Hunters.

I like what they're trying to do with Warlocks. They're trying to make Affliction more raid-viable, they're trying to give Demo the sort of raid utility that Beastmastery has, they're trying to make Destro a standalone school-switching nuking tree. But the numbers simply don't pan out. As it stands now, for PvE at least, I'd rather be a Mage than a Warlock in WotLK.

Nah, I'm actually quite happy with what I've seen so far from alpha, there's solid stuff in there.

But the main thing for me, bottom line, is the damage payoff: are mages going to see a relative increase in their power? I'm thinking they will, although it's obviously way to early to tell.

But if they don't, and I'm confident our leading TCs will be able to determine this by the end of beta, then I'll drop the class without compunction. Have zero interest in repeating our TBC experience.

Apaine: I was not aware of the PvE Dim Ret. And even so, granted, roots is a lot more viable than Cyclone. However I maintain that it's merely a snare, not a true CC, as the mob can still cast/rang and melee when applicable. Poly is superior in every way to it by allowing you to CC any target, and within reason (reason being: DoT) swap to another target. Even one within melee range of other players, something Root can not do. This is twice as relevant for pulls where the problem isn't tank intake, but ability control. Mobs that Fear, Mind Control or Heal are prime CC suspects, not additional melee.



I honestly don't get your post. "being desired" is key to every single player/class, it is the definition of the game. Nobody plays a game to not be desired.

You then wax about versatility, irrelevant to the fact that while Hybrids do have much more versatility by design, their actual spec dictates much less versatility. No tree can tank, no Enh shaman can heal, no Protadin can DPS. The only things that can be said, within reason, is an Ele-shaman can off-heal and a Bear can DPS. Perhaps a moonkin can off-heal too, but I'm not aware how well. Pure classes, in fact, by definition have more -actual- versatility because they aren't working off 90% one school. Any mage can poly, nova, AE, conjure, IB, Blink and Invis. A rogue has infinitely more versatility than a Retadin or a Fury-warr. You may be amazed that a druid -could- tank/dps/cast/heal but in essence they don't.

Then you top-off your post with a view that because you sailed through an instance and found it too easy, then we should reduce all classes to no game-influencing abilities, and instead have DPS classes as just that; my irony sense tingles that you value versatility and then go and claim it's useless and should be removed.

Edit: And I believe it has been stated by Blue that the intention is not to make every tree/class/setup equally viable for pvp/pve. That is obviously in the realm of the impossible, lest we homogenize every single aspect of the game so much that it doesn't matter any more.

Now that we know (from statement upthread) how Burnout works, the Fire changes will produce good performance. The only real problem is that they don't really change the way a Fire mage plays at all. He'll still use the Fireball/Scorch rotation dictated by his haste, he'll still get up close and personal for AOE. The only change is to how much damage he'll do, which in the case of single targets will be "a lot," and in the case of 3+ targets will be "a hell of a lot." That's really the only significant failure I see in our changes: the fact that Fire mages will still play exactly as they do now.

The Frost changes are predictable? Well, sort of. Improved Water Elemental is very predictable and dull, yes, I find it disappointing. Could have been more creative. Same goes for CttB. Brain Freeze took me by surprise, but not in a good way. Deep Freeze also surprised me and I think may have interesting possibilities, especially if the freeze does not break on damage. Winter's Grasp took me entirely by surprise -- because while we've asked for it for ages, I never thought they'd give it to us. And it presents a pretty big change in the way Frost mages will play, first by permitting shatter combos on bosses, and second by permitting us to stun and shatter (via Deep Freeze) targets that are immune to roots and snares but not to stuns (useful and fun on some trash pulls -- I realize nobody cares about trash, but we do spend a fair amount of time on it, so anything that makes it more fun is good in my book).

The Arcane changes are predictable? I'm not so sure. I know a lot of people I've talked to got excited about NP, because they always found the T2 set bonus to be great fun and have missed it. And Arcane Barrage, while not useful in a DPS rotation, is a direct response (as is Winter's Grasp, though not as strong a response) to one of our biggest, most consistent complaints to Blizzard: our inability to DPS effectively on the move.

I think that's important to note here: off the top of my head, Blizzard has directly addressed three of the biggest complaints that we, the players, have consistently communicated to them: single-target DPS, inability to shatter bosses, and inability to DPS while moving. The talents look pretty successful to me when put in that context. Are there things I would change? Sure. But I think they've landed pretty close to the mark.

I don't think it's quite that bad (although as I describe a couple posts up, it sure isn't good). The fact that Burnout is a total crit damage increase, and the wording on Eternal Flames, makes it pretty much a sure thing that EF is also a total crit damage increase, and going from 200% to 230% crits is pretty damn good even before you factor in the Immolate refresh. Molten Core may fail at encouraging alternation of Shadow Bolt and Incinerate (it does fail), but it may succeed at making it worthwhile for a DS/Destro 'lock with a sacrificed Imp to cast Corruption.

Those were all trainable spells, and we've only seen two of our trainable spells so far. One of them could revolutionize elementary specs, which, while it won't affect every mage, certainly helps diversify the class. The other is, granted, pretty boring. But there are still two to go.

This is how everyone reads it, but I think they're wrong. The way I read the statement is that Blizzard is content with being unable to achieve equal viability for every tree -- but that doesn't mean they don't strive for it, within reason. The proof for this interpretation being that they don't completely ignore PvE improvements for Frost, or PvP improvements for Arcane and Fire -- they keep trying to improve the trees in the content they're weakest in. And I suspect this is going to be be more important, not less, in WotLK, but that's more a gut feeling about respecs becoming more, not less difficult.

I don't think the intent ever was to ignore cross-discipline viability, I did not intend to imply that. however the Blizz post addresses impossible demands like "why can't I top-tier raid -and- do dailies -and- arena 5v5 2k+ with the same spec?????? My rouge friend does". As the lower-end of trees get heavier and the actual creative ideas get fewer, there's a limit to how many +dmg talents you can have. So introducing PvP-helpful abilities in PvE-prone trees is one way of shooting two birds with one stone. (1) inter-discipline viability (2) lack of ideas.

No comment on CttB which is exactly the opposite of what I just explained, but what can I say. I can imagine the Board Meeting "OK folks, lastly Frost Mage penultimate... Any ideas...?" *eery silence* "another DK-synergy?" *universal booing* "Fuck it, let's jus givem more slow and more damage... That's what they cojmplained about in PvE (damage) and PvP (CoC equal slow to hamstring/poison), good let's go home."

Aye, exactly. I commented only because so many people interpret that statement as: "You're not meant to raid with Frost," and "Blizzard is fine with Fire completely sucking in PvP, they intend for you to respect every night if you want to do both."

Depending on how much you value the increase in snare duration from Permafrost, the side-effect of CTTB is of course that it effectively only costs two points, if you're satisfied with the current strength of your snares.

It is the same with mage class to some extent, but my point was leaning towards respec versatility to fill different role whatever is needed. Can a mage do anything beside dpsing? Do hybrids have really subpar dps considering their synergy? Answer is of course no for both questions.

There will be always more DPS classes that you can fill the spots but less tanks, healers and general 'buffer' classes. Thats why hybrids are more desired. Gear for each role isn't and won't be a problem, neither the respec costs.

There are much better ways of making trash, bosses and classes 'fresh' instead of making things 'easier' the more CC you bring.
There are tons of ways to do it, i dont want to give examples but whoever had a shot on Guild Wars ever could give really a lot of options that could be added to the game especially considering talents/skills.

@ Lhivera , if you could, please edit your posts instead of doing post under post. Its much easier to read.