I am not saying Blizzard shouldn't fix problems if they occur. But just begin with fun as a starting point. I think resilence was introduced to counter too much crit being stacked. But crit itself is actually a very "fun" stat. If we wanted to go by pure math as a starting point, why even have crits? Having nothing crit would make the math and scaling so much more linear and easy to predict.

But see? it takes away from "fun". I am sure everyone loves those big crits as and when they happen. Just as when a mob crits you and you experience a surge of panic and have to scramble to deal with it. High end arena players didn't like that much uncertainty because it made luck > skill too much. So it was introduced into pvp.

But monsters don't complain when you crit them. So resilence has no place in pve. You aren't going to see monsters ever having resilence!

You are right. Its based on the illusion of progress. If you define everything in a relative sense, then its an illusion because they need to balance stuff. But in an absolute sense, there IS progress. And its what's keeps people playing. Progress in seeing new content, killing new mobs, getting new gear, getting better stats, more spells, more levels, in learning new spells, etc etc.

Hence why I wished for more spells to make a mage more distinct, more interesting to play, and not just another different colored bolt. Say they scrapped living bomb, frostfire bolt, or arcane barrage. But instead, changed AM, or AB, and made it such that AB, AM, fireball, frostbolt all scaled perfectly with gear, etc and kept mages in whichever spot on the DPS meter that is deemed fair.

Would the mage class be considered perfectly balanced then? probably. But would the WOTLK mage hence be fun? Nope, because we got nothing new!

Living Bomb is certainly one of the coolest spells ever to see the light of WoW alphas, for sure.
And yes, playfun is ofc important (especially from Blizzard's perspective - numerical balance doesn't keep people playing, playfun does), but hardly in the scope of these forums. Being EJ. ^^

That is assuming something can't be playfun and numercially balanced at the same time...

But that is going way offtopic.

Back to living bomb, There are three things I don't like about it:
1) It is another kind of arcane explosion with a twist, it can be dangerous to be in melee range and being at a larger range will increase the time a tank has to do something about the fact that you might pull aggro off him.
2) To this spell to be worth it, it has to be better than arcane explosion and the other AoE spells, which means the use of other AoE's will be excluded (assuming you can't use another AoE while affected by living bomb).
3) An additional AoE spell is not what I envision as the top spell of a talent tree, seeing fire already has a lot of AoE abilities in its talent tree.

I'm not entirely sure if you can cast another spell when living bomb is active, the movies I have seen only use living bomb.

As long as the spell is listed as instant cast, taking 6 sec before exploding and nothing about channeling I pretty much take it for granted that you CAN cast other spells while waiting for living bomb to detonate. But since its an AoE spell and you haveto be within 10 yards I guess the cast sequence will be LB AE AE AE then rinse and repeat. Perhaps flamestrike will be scaled up to be worthwhile in wich case you use that as well as LB and AE in some combo.

Being fun and being balanced are one and the same, to be honest most players don't enjoy games that are hideously broken and yes they do quit over it if they stop enjoying themselves. Johnny fire mage who specs into living bomb and is bright enough to figure out it sucks isn't going to be very happy about it. Most players are not 'dedicated' to a game, they'll quit very quickly if they aren't having fun and horribly undertuned or overtuned abilities are one of the quickest ways to ensure that. I'm not sure why we're even having this discussion.

I suspect living bomb will be useful if it doesn't lock out the arcane explosion (and/or blast wave/fireblast when they're on cooldown) spam.

It's more damage to point blank AOE's with the opportunity cost being one GCD that could be used for some other AOE. Unless the damage is so pathetic that you're better off spamming just AE for 6 seconds rather than casting it first and then spamming AE, then it'll be useful any time the mage needs to do sustained damage while moving, just as AE is used today after hitting a monster with a chill effect for kiting, or when chasing people around the arena who are badly wounded and pillar-dancing.

Edit - no global cooldown on living bomb. Which means if it doesn't lock out AOE spells it HAS to add more overall damage to close range AOE spam. No matter what spell coefficient or base damage is.

It will also be useful in raid AOE situations where you trust your tank to hold aggro or where the pack of baddies will die before they kill you after they get mad at you. We don't know how often that will be true in Wrath, but in BC a lot of the lower level instances and 5mans are packed with such situations today. Furthermore the threat dynamics in AOE may be different than they are today, requiring a mage to have some way of filling the gap of improved threat that tanks will be generating in AOE.

It being a fire spell, it also means talents like combustion, impact, master of elements etc proc from it, unlike pure AE spam, adding additional utility beyond any DPS boosts. Finally as a separate spell, its damage stacks with max damage from other AOEs, so it's better than, say, just making arcane explosion spell damage better via talents.

I have hopes for it. In the end though if they don't adjust the AOE caps to allow for level 80 base spell+spell damage gear we may be very sad about aoe damage when not used as a mobile damage method vs single target.

Nope. Fun and balanced are not necessarily one and the same. We could have a game where there is only one class and everyone is equal. Balanced? definitely. Fun? a big resounding no! Different people have different views of what means balanced and that may also be different from what Blizzard considers balanced. Horribly overtuned abilities skewing one class over all others that cause tons of people to quit is not something I have seen Blizzard do yet. They do care about balance, just not to that kind of extent.

Far more people will quit if they are not having fun. Class X is a DPS class and does 2% lower DPS than it should. The average player wouldn't even care as long as they are having fun with class X. But say class X is a DPS class, but is totally not fun to play. It is totally uninspiring, monotonous and in fact irritating to play. But it has a spell that when spammed, allows it to do DPS that is on par with what a DPS class should do (so it is balanced). Would you play such class? I wouldn't.

Don't overestimate the number of people that care about a small difference in DPS amongst classes. Warlocks have been higher on the DPS totem pole relative to mages for the majority of TBC and with better utility, but Blizzard's wow subscriptions continue to grow. And its not like everyone is only warlocks and nothing else.

I played a mage since orginal wow and had no alt. That's over 3 years of being a mage despite all the perceived overpoweredness or underpowerness periods. Come wotlk, I would still play my mage, but I am going to seriously try out another class (possbly DK) as an alt for the very first time. Why? Because so far, I just don't see a lot of "fun" stuff being added to a mage come WOTLK.

Maybe frostfire bolt or winter's grasp might be the best thing since sliced bread, maybe it will catapult us to top DPS. But if all I am looking forward to in wotlk as a mage is yet another different colored bolt spell, then for me, its time to change classes and try something new. Fun and balance are definitely NOT one and the same. Fun is fun, balance is balance.

So some quick fun with numbers. Here's how the first version of living bomb stacks up to blast wave, arcane explosion and dragon's breath in terms of damage, assuming the same talents. We'll ignore spell damage, crit and haste for this, and talents that improve crits, beyond noting that the fire talents do considerably more damage relative to arcane explosion over time because of these talents. Rank 1 Living bomb is achievable by level 60, so should be compared to level ~60 equivalents of the AOE spells, as it will have higher ranks likely as we progress to 80 that do more damage.

Assuming the same spell damage coefficient for all of them is wrong, but AOE instant spell damage coefficients generally suck and the differences are likely not relevent given how crude this comparison is. It might be a lot better if they rate living bomb at over 6 seconds rather than treating it as instant.

Modifiers for fire spells: 3% playing with fire, 10% firepower, 15% world in flames
Modifire for Arcane Explosion: 3% playing with fire

Rank 6 arcane explosion (L62) = 328 damage, 219 dps 310 mana burn/second
Rank 5 blast wave (L60) = 655 dmg 437 dps 363 mana burn/sec (reduced by other fire/frost talents probably)
Rank 2 dragon br (L56) = 638 dmg 327 dps 383 mana burn/sec (reduced by other fire/frost talents probably)
6 second spam of dragon breath, blast wave, arcane explosion comes to 1949 dmg, 2050 mana

Living bomb at level 60 does 66.45 damage 3 times (every 2 sec), 276 dmg at end So we're looking at about 475 damage for 400 mana. As it will likely stack with the other instant AOE's (given no global cooldown, etc), it provides a potential 25% increase in close range AOE damage, 35% more when blast wave and dragon breath aren't available.

This does not even consider crit-talents or spell-damage coefficients yet, which may be better than arcane explosion (6 second spell) and will almost certainly be better than blast wave and dragon breath (as it has no secondary effect). AE alone does better when it's only 1-2 targets but it is still a pretty decent damage boost (30%).

Looks decent unless blizzard did something dumb with scaling, or made spell damage coefficient zero, or made it not crit or something. I'd love to have 25% more AOE damage of fire type in all situations where I currently spam close range area spells, even if it does take 6s for the full payoff to be achieved. From a threat standpoint backloading some of the damage is desirable, in PVP, less so.

Personally I'm far more interested in living bomb -> (insert dead time) -> combustion -> flamestrike -> blastwave chains than the actual effect of living bomb.

And I didn't say Blizzard can't do both. I just said that Blizzard should start off with fun, then move on to balance.

Take warlock demon form. Wow! I can change into a big cool demon that shoots out shadow bolts! Cool! Sounds overpowered! Who cares! Put it in, test it in alpha, then tweak it and balance it in alpha/beta.

If some blizzard developer comes out with the idea of warlock demon form, and immediately the reaction is that it throws all balance completely off, its overpowered, so drop the idea... you see where this is going? Another classic example of balance totally destroying fun. Invis. It should have been such a fun spell. But in the name of balance, it was made totally un-fun. I mean, how can it be that just because I am invisible, I am now blind as well? They should have called it phase shift instead and we wouldn't have been so disappointed.

No dead time...no gcd on living bomb, according to the early posts in this thread.

I'm not convinced flame strike is a good mix with it though, as it needs you to be close to the enemy, and flamestrike main advantage is you stand off with it. I would expect, if mana/threat allows it, that spamming a sequence like this would be better from a damage perspective:

icy-veins+trinket+living-bomb+combust+dragon breath-blast wave-arcane explosionx2
living bomb+arcane explosionx4
living bomb+arcane explosionx4
etc

The above sequence works even if they're kiting you, or if you are kiting them.

losing 3 sec to flamestrike, risking pushback and hoping they stay in the dot area seems counterproductive. This is especially true as your combust might proc on the low damage living bomb tics rather than on that first dragon breath or blast wave (you can likely get both off before the first 2 second tic of living bomb if you macro all the lead in zero gcd stuff)

You assume here the availability of a pushback immunity spell, and worry about pushback.

You're being pedantic. Point is a broken game does not stay fun for very long, and the rumor-mill can readily drive away new customers. I wasn't referring to 2% damage differentials in end-game raiding, but addressing the insistence in this thread that living bomb will be 'fun' even if mechanically it's complete and utter shit. Something that's not tuned reasonably is typically fun for a couple of hours until the player figures out that they'd have a much easier time winning doing something else. That's not a good model for a subscription based game with a 2 year expansion cycle.

To be fair, even I don't think WoW is hideously broken. It's certainly unfair and not well balanced, but relative to the vast majority of games it's pretty well balanced.

Also, I disagree that being fun and balanced are always the same. I think that really depends on the gamer type of the player. For anyone who's played the card game Magic, you might be familiar with the archtypes Johnny, Timmy, and Spike. For anyone unfamiliar with them, basically Timmy likes really big flashy things, Johnny likes really innovative and cool things, and Spike likes winning regardless of how he wins.

I think that's the downfall of the mage class in that it's become more of that Timmy aspect. They get really big cool things like concentrated fireballs, living bomb, arcane explosion, etc etc... but in the end "big and flashy" doesn't necessarily translate to "powerful".


And another note on Living Bomb, is anyone else concerned of the knockback making LB unusable in pve? I mean, think back to any aoe phase of a fight and remember that you had to wait to get everything rounded up and then you could start aoe'ing. Something like Living Bomb scatters the entire group and, if the group isn't killed by LB, they'll have to be rounded up AGAIN.

To me, LB seems to be a really dangerous liability to use in pve... so it's pretty much a pvp-specific ability.

In any case, I don't even think firespec will have living bomb. I just don't see the point to it so far.

I think that'll depend a great deal on whether they improve Burnout. If you have reason to take Burnout, you'll probably have more than 50 points in the tree even without Living Bomb, so you wind up with the same choice people are left with now for Dragon's Breath, namely: why not take it, since you can't really put that point anywhere useful in the other trees anyway?

Yes it more or less stands or falls with burnout. But personally I tend to pick coldsnap over DB for raidng as things are today. Its far to early to tell yet but it doesnt feel impossible that I will still think 21 or possibly even 31 points in frost makes for a better firespec than 51+ points in fire. Not that I will complain if that´s the case, I really mourned the death of elemental it was some of the most epic fun Ive had with the mage class. If FFB can turn that into a viable raid spec Ill be jumping up and down like a small kid at X-mas.

Another scenario I se as rather likely is LB actually packing quite a punch even if you keep recasting it before it goes boom and mix it with a good cycle of other AoE stuff.

A big fat cake of sweetness tho would be if things are tuned so a highspeed playstyle of fire is made good for pvp. If firemages can wreck the kind of havoc like in olden days there´s a lot of fun you could have with LB.

Well yes and no really. What really matters is how burnout affacts deep fire DPS, if that is competetive to compared other mage specs and compared to viable specs of other DPS classes and above all if it breaks or does not break fire mana consumtion.

You cant really compare talents straight off from class to class or from tree to tree. if Ignite was an arcane talent affecting arcane spells then burnout would be more powerfull. If mages worked exactly like elemental shamans then our clearcast would be a more powerfull version like the one they have. The only thing that matters is if this deep fire talent makes for a good part of a deep fire spec. If it does and that spec doesnt get totally pwned by other specs then it simply doesnt matter that another tree has the same talent but better.

I think we're talking about different things. I'm talking about how balance shifts with gear, not with the addition of abilities. An ability can be overpowered all day long. As long as it doesn't become more or less overpowered, then the problem is not the ability's scaling but its initial power. Same goes if it happens to be underpowered.

You don't sound like you have a problem with balanced scaling. You just have a problem with balance being prioritized over "fun" in general. All I've been talking about is scaling. Good scaling doesn't balance anything; it only preserves balance--however good, bad, or ugly--to subsequent gear levels.

Now here's the real question: if Living Bomb is somewhat of a liability because of the knockback, and if Burnout gets buffed or changed to make it more valuable for fire builds than going into a 33/38'ish arc/fire build, would 0/50/21 or 10/50/11 be a better spec than, say, 9/51/11, 10/58/3, or 2/58/11?

Yup. That was dumb. It doesn't invalidate the main point which is that the ability seems to be as much for mobile AOE (ie like in PVP situations) as it is for close-range burst AOE spam for PvE or PVP. Neither situation is usually where you use flamestrike, pushback or no pushback.

I'm also not as sure as Manly is that the intermediate tics won't consume combustion. Depends on whether or not they get spell damage applied. Ie, are we looking at molten armor, or are we looking at something treated like a dot or are we looking at default spell mechanics or something like a channeled spell or something bizzare with its own rules like arcane missiles?

Not being in the alpha, I'll have to wait until WOLK to find out. These sorts of things could make or break the talent.

Much depends on the mana mechanics of Wotlk and that is something we just can't know about yet. Shadow priest regens are going to be nerfed and it looks like spirit is going to play bigger role etc. Value of Arcane Mind and Clearcasting is therefore a bit unclear.