Anedris

Removing CC would simply remove one more aspect that they can use to make pulls interesting. I have found controlling two or three mobs as a frost mage one of the most fun things to do in 5-persons.

Regards the hybrids, anyone who wanted to fill more than one role chose the wrong class by rolling a mage. What made you think mages would ever be able to do anything besides DPS? I'm reasonably sure there was never any false advertising on that score.

In my experience as a raid and guild leader, healers will always be most in demand. So roll a healer if that's all you want. Tanks are a close second (and in 5-person content probably harder to find than healers). Surprise surprise, the roles that are weakest in (non-organized) PvP and solo play are the rarest. I hope this isn't news to anyone.

There's an awful lot of "grass is greener" whining going on, which is hardly helpful or interesting to read.

 

radikal

I think a lot of the warlock envy comes from a PvP perspective more than a PvE when comparing the WotLK talents. Every warlock tree seems dangerously OP. UA Locks with SL and Fel Dom? AND Cripple? Fel Dom at 17 in the tree and Cold Snap still at 21 justifiably creates some nerdrage imo. None of the new talents really create any good synergy with any other class besides DKs (and I'm terrified by how freeze DR is going to play out for us)

Personally, I've finally realized it's easy to play multiple classes/character if all you care about is arena. I won't make the same mistake of simply relying on my favorite class. ^^

 

Ozymandis

My personal opinion isn't that the grass is greener in the Warlock's lawn. Not at all. My opinion is that our grass is the same damn shade. I can't tell where my yard begins and his ends and I keep getting the feeling that Blizzard is inching the patio furniture closer and closer to my side till one day the Warlock's chez lounge is gonna be on my patio and he's gonna be in the house Enslaving and Corrupting my wife. (Enough with the damn grass, please?)

I think its safe to say that the four healing classes are pretty easily distinguishable in terms of style and approach. Druids with their Hots, Pallys with big single target heals, etc., and I feel TBC went a long way to further distinguish healers and heal styles from one another. By contrast, Warlocks and Mages have been rendered more or less indistinguishable in terms of damage and approach. Thats where I'd like to see change - I'd like both classes to get a bit more character and a bit more uniqueness in how they approach dealing damage. I don't believe that it was Blizzard's original intent for there to be two bolt tossing classes.

edit: fixed typo

 

Sorcerer

I am not claiming that mages shall fill more than one roll, but with regard present times and and current theorycrafting mages are lackluster class that is and _might be_ less desired in future than other classes as example especially considering 10-25mans.
If a hybrid does similar dps as the mage and providing actually much more overall dps due to buffs and synergy and so on something is wrong and is a game breaking.

Yes grass is greener when you have multiple level 70 chars and can actually compare how's the grass on each side.
Considering my few geared 70s, why shouldn't i point out that one of them that is actually lacking?

 

Jarlyn

I agree there's a lot of whining, so here's some suggestions on meaningful changes that would go a long way towards fixing the problem of bringing more than 1 mage to a raid. One spec's DPS must be suitably high to always justify at least one raid spot, and that will probably be Fire. But what I think mages are lacking is an alternate spec with slightly lower DPS but with a quality buff to the raid. Winter's Grasp seems like an attempt at this, but it's already well-established that Imp Faerie Fire is not a compelling reason to bring a Moonkin - WG for the sake of the +hit buff will not be a compelling reason to bring a mage. It's further well-established that classes like Survival hunters and Affliction warlocks (pre-T6 before Destro gets imba, anyway) can function perfectly well in a more utility role than one of pure DPS, and I'd like to see those principles applied to mages.

Anyway, for the actual suggestions, change Incanter's Absorption (honestly that talent is just completely out in left field) to a talent that allows your Arcane spells to cause the target to either take increased magic damage (say 3-5%) or a proc that increases damage taken by, say 10% for 6 seconds. To take this a step further, I'd like to see the Amp/Dampen Magic talent greatly improved, and maybe add in an Imp AI talent that caused your Int to grant you additional spell crit rating.

I'm not the most creative person in this regard, but I think those sorts of changes would give Arcane a clear purpose and solve a lot of the issues with justifying multiple mage spots in raids.

 

Lhivera

I honestly think Frost mages are going to be just fine. With Winter's Grasp increasing their own DPS by about 10%, and another 5% from CttB, their sustained DPS won't be very far behind Fire, and with higher efficiency (which will matter more, with spriest regen sharply reduced). Especially true of Fire mages switch back from Icy Veins to Clearcasting to fuel Burnout (a good trade, give up 2-3% DPS to gain 14-15% DPS). Then add to that the fact that they can string together sixty seconds at a time of +30-40% DPS (and keep Icy Veins up for 20 of those seconds) on demand for those fights where focused DPS windows are useful, and the possibility that they can fuel shatters for other mage specs, and that +2% hit debuff becomes a tiny bit of gravy. Frost will also have a moderate advantage over Fire in movement-heavy fights, as Ice Lance spam while running around becomes somewhat less futile with Winter's Grasp.

Arcane's the only one that's really a question mark, and it'll probably take some actual experimentation to figure out how it'll work best. We do know that it will be the best spec for high-mobility fights due to Barrage.

In short, I think all three trees will probably work out fine compared with each other. The real question is how we'll compare to other classes.

 

Deedre

I think folks who pretend that everything is just peachy keen and that there's no cause for concern are a bit delusional at this point -- and have very little respect for attempts to shut down discussion that honestly acknowledges this.

It's not qqing if there's genuine grounds for disatisfaction.

That said, I'm cautiously optimistic.

 

Jarlyn

Oh I know, I wasn't questioning Frost's personal DPS, just the added +hit on Winter's Grasp that seems to have been randomly tacked onto it.

 

◊ Vontre

I think warlocks are going to get pigeon-holed into demon form for anything other than a zerg dps team, honestly. Bear form for warlocks is no small matter, and seeing the way rogues tear them apart now... and then Soul Link gets nerfed... yeeeah.

Deep freeze is, I am guessing by its description, a 5 second stun that counts as a freeze, it's pretty absurd on its own. It may or may not stay, however I'm almost more excited about chilled to the bone, as 30% snares make it possible to outright kite other non-rogue melee even while snared. Also, get me if I'm wrong, but if a CoC overwrites crippling poison then it has a chance to proc frostbite, unlike currently? Or does it already? Either way they can more work in tandem which is handy for rogue synergy, +5 seconds to stunlock is handy to rogue synergy, and WGR is great for ice lancing bitches who aren't snared. Ice seems to be full of win. And FROST DEATHKNIGHTS.

Oh and not to mention the 80 magic resist to everything and 50% duration off magic effects? Yeah. I specifically rolled another mage (horde) because I'm highly optimistic about it, and high synergy with Blizzard's new class is definitely a good place to be in.

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

◊ manly

I shall remind you daily about not choosing troll when you had a chance.

Log on with different model:
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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Pintofbrew

You are wrong; Hybrids do not have sub-par -only- dps. They have sub-par options while DPSing. Can any class other than a Rogue, Mage, Warlock or Hunter Drop Agro? No. Why? because they are hybrids. They can do "other" things. They may elect not to, but either way they have the choice.

Every class has tools in their box, Pure DPS classes just have much sharper ones than hybrids. Yes a druid can CC, but a Mage's is better. Yes a Shaman may attempt to off-tank but a Rogue does it better. Miss-direct, AoE-DPS, AoE-Snares, Banish, Poly, Enslave, Searing Pain tanking.these are all Tools a pure-dps class has that Hybrids do not; there is not one single thing a hybrid does that positively out-shines in such a strong way that you -need- a hybrid for anything. You often -may- supplicate a hybrid, for example a Shaman can perfectly fine kite Vashj striders in lieu of a warlock/mage.

In no way will any hybrid gain the adaptability, the versatility the actual efficacy of the Pure classes. This is the very definition of Hybridization; you may not be master of all trades, Jack.

The only reason hybrids are gaining in output, now, is because as you saw during BC, they were more like Jack of some trades, bad at most. Moonkins were practically the butt of the joke, hence they need to be brought more in-line. SPs had the most god-awful mechanics in the game and way too much party-mp5, it's being brought back in line.

Do not interpret a buff to the worst class in the game as motivation for "fuck that, let's replace all mages/locks with moonkins, it's the same shit but they can respec tank too".

For completeness, I believe it's Chaise Longue, as in long chair, rather than.. Um... "house-of lounge...?"

 

Sorcerer

The way the hybrids actually do dmg doesnt require them to have significant agro dumps, the same way why BF warrior doesnt really require agro dump and yet they (hybrids in general) still bring much more utility, synergy to raids.

And since when mages have any choice in 25man raids? There is 1 spec (ok 2 but still 1 tree) that is pretty much vialable in endgame 25 since the begining not counting the odd tryout of T5 fix to arcane.

Ask yourself, could endgame content live without mages right now? Yes, could we live without shammans for example? No. If the trend keeps going, blizzard fixing boomkins, sp will make mages even less desired.

Can raid live without drinks, poly, portals, AI and so on? By no means we need mages overpowered, but we need to actually get "something" since the alpha class design is totally not to the presence and future. This game evoluted.

Back to PVP concerns. Current late TBC state of mage in every bracket is somehow not good. The problem is really complicated as it consists of actually lack of kiting tools, spell pushback and anti-train abilities vs any "balanced combo" having a offensive/defensive dispells and enough power to shut down the mage.

One thing i'd like to see changed the way our kiting abilities don't get shafted with a single dispell or get countered by other class abilities. It's pretty amazingly hard to kite nowadays, becouse the way other classes can control us or assist others with synergy nulifying our CORE abilities. I thing going into heavy details would go into making an essay few pages long so i'll focus on possible fixes.

I was thinking on something similar to the warlock unstable affliction addition with a silence upon dispell added to our snare/root abilities that could have for ex. % to stun/silence/immobilize/freeze or whatever added via a talent point.

 

Pintofbrew

Firstly, what the hell do you mean "the way they do...dumps"? That means they're not doing enough DPS. Pure and simple. No agro-dump creates trouble on a number of encounters, it doesn't allow spiking or selective nuking. Yes, there are many encounters where this is not the issue. There are also many more encounters where DPS doesn't matter.

Secondly, you miss-interpret me. I did not say anything about mage specs being choices. "they can do other... have the choice" was meant as a demonstration of why a Hybrid can not have as much versatility inside it's chosen role. They traded versatility in DPS for a broader range in less depth.

I am very well aware of the state of mages in 25. Your statement, however, isn't relevant. How many specs can a Rogue have in PvE? The state of mages in BC is not an indication to the state they will occupy in WotLK, you may know the talents of FFA but you have not seen the instances/raids.

I do not need to ask myself if the game can survive without mages, that much is clear, but assuming that "more DPS" is the answer to keeping us competitive is casting your nets out, hoping to catch only one fish. Expect fire's massive AoE, Frost's DK-synergy and multi-mage WG to show you why mages will be a competitive choice in 3.0 and beyond. When we saw the BC talents, we all wet our pants with DB. 2 years on, is it good? No. 2008, FFA out, nobody bothers to look at World In Flames. 2 years down the line will it be a filler? How do you Know?

SPs and Mages are unrelated, they do two different things and they will not out-scale us. The only buffs they've received solve their non-scaling issues and their problematic mechnanics. Other talents they gain which increase their output are only barely enough to cover the DPS loss from the ISB change. SPs, like hybrids, are primarily buffers with a competitive but not top-ranked DPS output. Just like Ele-shamans. Just like 2h or fury warriors. Just like Retadins, Enh-shamans and soon, moonkins.

I don't see why you're so bitter about moonkins; you say it yourself. "blizzard fixing boomkins". They are a borked, neglected, shitty and broken class, they have been since they first were created back in 1.4 (?) and at long bloodly last they're getting a rightful spot in the raiding scene, as a BUFFER class. The utterly unbalanced talents they received at FFA were hugely nerfed within days.

Assume a Moonkin can do equal damage with a mage. That's bloody great. Now assume same mage in the Moonkin's group. What is your problem?

This thread is getting so whiny and gloomy it's losing the plot. The Title, gentlemen, is [Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion, not [Every Other Class That'll Be Better Than Mage] WotLK Talent Preview.

 

Sorcerer

Do we need? I think its the point where every new fight is copy of what was in the past. I haven't seen a single fresh fight in TBC. That might be irrelevant but gives some idea whats gonna be in the future.

 

Pintofbrew

Man, I'm not going to go into how Vashj hot-potato-toss, Terron's mini-game, Kael's multi-tasking panic, Mala'cress's player's aspect, Prince's random pot-luck Aran's tankless nukefest et cetera are all clearly cases of "same-ol same-ol", or about MH being a string of timed events is exactly like pre-BC encounters, but I'd rather drop this discussion entirely.
You seem intent that the whole world is doom and gloom for mages because you saw some Moonkin talents while I don't, and I think ping-ponging what we think makes us look like immature AoL chatters.

Moreover, it's not relevant to Mage FFA Talent Preview, so if you want to continue in this vein let's go to PMs.

 

dexia

10 classes...25 raid spots. That's 2.5 raid spots per person. Right now I can see only one raid spot going to a DK since they can only be placed in melee and tank groups, and their 5% strength party bonus probably is better suited to the tank group than rogues. The exception is if their DPS is so good they replace rogues outright, and that would be broken as hell. There will ideally be 4 shamans until we know what buffs/nerfs they get. You will probably want 3 paladins if you can swing it for blessings.

That's 17 raid spots left for 7 classes. If there are only 2 mages in the raid, or 2 warlocks, or 2 priests, or 2 druids, or 2 warriors...it is not a slap in the face to the class. I swear I almost spit out my drink when I see people talking about stacking 4 frost mages with another elemental build mage to maximize WG uptime--that's 5 raid spots. Where the hell would you put them? Does anybody else see how incredibly broken that is? There shouldn't have to be 5 of any class in a raid including shaman.

Mages currently are not the weak sisters of the poor people make them out to be in T6 content. They lag behind hunters (everybody lags behinds hunters, I expect their dps to be toned down in WotLK), rogues and warlocks, but arcane/frost will outdps warlocks in shorter fights. They are well ahead of all the hybrid dps specs. Everybody like to compare mage dps to lock dps, but I'm not convinced lock dps is keeping pace in WotLK. Affliction is getting a small buff, but it was always lagging behind mages anyway due to poor scaling. It still isn't going to scale as well. The Demonology tree might actually be lower dps than current if it went live right now. In Destruction, ISB is nerfed, there is a net gain of two or three talents which will increase raid DPS...Kindling Soul and Eternal Flames. Eternal Flames is a lower DPS increase than Burnout but better mana efficiency. Kindling Soul is like 40 spell damage and scales like crap. Molten Core remains to be seen whether it's worthwhile or not. Anybody thinking the grass is greener on the warlock side when comparing DPS potential ought to check emotion at the door and look at it objectively. I myself am thinking warlocks might get pigeonholed to Affliction and Demonology builds in raids because if Destruction doesn't match mage dps, RL's will want to go for better utility/buffs/debuffs from locks over DPS.

P.S. ISB is not the same thing--it has limited charges also being used up by SP. Because of the limited charges, going from 2 to 3 destro locks actually increases ISB uptime very marginally, like 5% or less.

 

Lhivera

Napkin math (all I have time for these days it seems) tells me that DS/Destro Fire's cast-for-cast DPS exceeds a Fire Mage's by a couple hundred DPS, if there is a Fire Mage present to mooch Improved Scorch from. However, this does not account for any Life Tapping at all. It's extremely difficult to estimate how it'll work out when Life Tap is added to the mix, because we have no idea how much Spirit is going to be involved, or how much much mana we can expect to be fed in by the various classes that are gaining that sort of ability. But it's not terribly unlikely that Fire Mages and DS/Destro Fire Warlocks will be solidly competitive with each other.

 

Pintofbrew

Mages and Locks... COMPETING? Who would have thought it.

Lhiv, are your calculations assuming the lock doesn't curse either? What would be the change if the lock changed to CoE for both chars? Also, educated guess for LT time: Let's assume Spirit regen increase is to be countered by cost increase (as was proven probable via scaling calculations a few weeks back), let's assume a desto-fire LTs in 3.0 as much as he does in 2.4, and then for completeness, let's run the same with 20% less LT, just for curiosity's sake.

If you have the time to, of course;

 

Lhivera

I wrote this little script a while back that allows you to plug in a hit rate, crit rate, ISB uptime, and CSD flag, and then it spits out a simple readout of how much damage/sec of casting time a spell gains when you add +1 damage, as kind of a simple measure of scaling.

I've updated it for the current WotLK talents. It can be found at:

http://www.manoutoftime.org/tcom/dow...g-wotlk.py.zip

You'll need Python to run it, and if you have any interest in twiddling the code, please feel free to do so and make the changes public if you think they'd be of interest. Use:

python scaling-wotlk.py

...to run it in normal mode, which will prompt you for input values. You can also use:

python scaling-wotlk.py --test

...to run it with the built-in test values.

This is some sample output from the old TBC version (I'll leave out the informative mid-calculation spam):

Test mode.
Mage has 99.0% hit, 25.0% crit before talents.
Warlock has 99.0% hit, 25.0% crit, 50% ISB uptime before talents.
Chaotic Skyfire Diamond is active.

Avg DPSCT Increase per point of +Damage
---------------------------------------
1.0414: Immolate (445 mana)
0.8722: Incinerate (355 mana)
0.8682: Shadow Bolt (420 mana)
0.8202: Fireball (400 mana)
0.7377: Arcane Blast/3 stack (633 mana)
0.6935: Frostbolt (272 mana)
0.6304: Scorch (169 mana)
0.5711: Arcane Missiles (784 mana)

This is essentially the sort of thing that raised all our scaling alarms back when TBC was approaching release, and of course we all know how that turned out. Now, the WotLK output.

Avg DPSCT Increase per point of +Damage
---------------------------------------
1.0501: Immolate (741 mana)
0.9101: Fireball (616 mana)
0.8927: Incinerate (584 mana)
0.8684: Shadow Bolt (679 mana)
0.7738: Frostbolt (416 mana)
0.7660: Arcane Blast/3 stack (1067 mana)
0.7148: Ice Lance (148 mana)
0.7093: Scorch (235 mana)
0.5927: Arcane Missiles (1167 mana)
0.0473: Waterbolt (~17 mana)

Frostbolt is assumed to be casting with 2 out of 9 Frostbolts at +50% crit.
Ice Lance is assumed to be casting with triple damage and +50% crit.

 

Pintofbrew

I wonder, Lhiv, could you add-in what we know about Frostfire Bolt and assume the prevalent FFB build? I believe it's along the lines of War Pirate :: Talent tree Mage

 

Lhivera

I'll see what I can do in the near future. It'd probably also be worth looking at the Burnout+Ignite+Ice Shards 385% crit damage build.

 

Deedre

Sorcerer, bear in mind that moonkins won't stack much: 1 per dps caster group. Realistically that is at most 2 spots per raid. And they really do need the love.

My own attitude towards boomkins isn't envy so much as excitement. They are becoming an interesting and possibly essential class/spec in a 25 man situation. (They won't be quite as attractive for 10 man raids, however.)Perhaps I'm overly impressed with this moonkin aura business, perhaps I'm suffering from mage ennui. Our own class needs nowhere near the amount of polish that balance druids do, it's far more complete. Our issues are far simpler and a question of adjusting damage output by and large.

 

Sorcerer

Ok boomking need love, but why all this crap about moonking like i'd speak night and day about them. Just giving out examples.

And IF we consider boomking strong enough to justify 2 spots per raid there will be probably a 3rd and 4th spot for feral and resto.

Back on polishing mage as you mentioned, why the only way im seeing here to polish the mage is to give more dmg? There is many more ways of improving and dmg might fix only a PVE side leaving the PVP side at the point where we are now.

Of course that's a problematic and broken mechanism if it would work that well on live, thats why blizzard is(?) doing it wrong.

 

Deedre

My own view is that the mage class is basically fine except for its damage output and no radical changes are necessary; mileage may vary. I have no grand expectations for neat new talents doing new and crazy things, I'm more focused on the nitty gritty of how big our nukes are going to hit.

So with that in mind, I'm basically fine with the new talents rolled out in alpha, it's just a numbers game for me. Maybe that's kind of boring, but there it is.

 

◊ manly

You realise that 100% of the posts I've read from you in the past month are all QQ about the warlock class sucking?

Maybe if you had shown an openness of mind I would agree or at least think your view is not biased, but at this juncture, I can't.

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1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.