You mean you <couldn't> care less?

that's what I said ;)

Which makes it a non-starter from the get go. Fun > anything, including balance.

Oh noes, a unique mechanic. Oh noes, it makes fire mages very powerful in certain situations. Oh noes! We must NERFNERFNERF. It is not acceptable that any mage should ever have to do more than spam the 2 button.

There are plenty of ways to reduce perceived excessive fire DPS. Take off 30 from the highest rank fireball and call it a day. But it seems my fears expressed earlier in this thread (namely that the fire vs frost epeen wavers will not stop until both specs do the exact same thing in every single situation) are coming true.

With that change, fire mages now officially take the title of most boring class in endgame raids.

At least you can scorch when low on mana with MoE. Hurray frostbolt.

Knew I should have quoted you. ><

Honestly, the ignite changes weren't even needed seeing as how 25 man raids are going to see 3-4 mages at most and rolling ignites aren't that useful then.


At least the ignite nerfs made up my mind, I'm going to be an arcane mage come TBC :). At least an arcane missile/arcane blast/wand pattern requires me to look at the screen, or at least push *different* buttons.

Thinking this over further, it does make a kind of sense, because it makes gear choices more meaningful for someone who specs for the elemental. Warlock pets have no duration -- intellect on your gear scales them in terms of how many spells they can cast before going OOM. But the water elemental's duration is a unique constraint. If its base mana provided enough to fuel 18 waterbolts, there'd be no point in having intellect scaling for the elemental at all. This forces the mage to bear in mind the impact that a piece of gear will have on the elemental's ability to deliver a maximum payload.

The former implies the latter.

Take priests for example. With the amazing buffs to the dps and utility provided by a shadow priest, you're going to want one in your raid... but probably only one, as their capability as a healer will be lessened. For similar reasons (I'm guessing/hoping anyway, I haven't looked at every class's new talents) I expect you'll want a variety of specs in every other class as well.

I think with the current state of mage talents the best example would be that if you have a deep frost mage who can provide Winter's Chill, then at the margin an Arcane/Frost mage is more valuable. I don't know if this will turn out to be true I would guess that Blizzard intends that a mix of class specs such as that to contribute more than a uniformity of class specs.

If there's one optimal spec that each member of a class should have, now THAT'S what I'd call a failure.

Unfortunately, this is almost exactly what is occurring with mages in the present endgame. I'm hopeful in regards to BC changing this.

A fellow on the beta mage forum just made a rather startling claim (in terrible, broken English):

That's the first I've ever heard of the elemental persisting after the mage dies. My intuition tells me he's full of it...but I'd love to hear if someone here can confirm/deny this statement.

Nope, say you have 3 mages in your raid of 25. Right now you would want all 3 to be fire. For dps and for the imp scorch debuff.

Fire provides imp scorch which helps out the warlocks and other fire mages.
Winters chill helps out..... no one else.
Arcane provides.... slow?

The only tree that actually synergizes with another class are the fire mages (warlocks). The rest provide no raid utility at all. No reason to have that spec in the raid besides subpar dps.

Frost/Arcane need a raidwide effectiveness boost. Winters chill affecting other types of spells (maybe like 5% or so) would make frost mages wanted in raids. Perhaps slow adding melee chance to hit the monster would solve arcane's raid needs.

The solution for that should not be to make them synergize less. It is easy to balance around the smallest common denominator, but that does not mean it provides desirable gameplay.

Clearly, the frost synergy is supposed to be around frostbite/FN/shatter. Problem is that mechanic does not work in raids right now. Rather than making fire mages the least fun to play spec in the game they should focus on getting that unique frost strength to work on a larger scale.

You seem to be reading a lot of "nerf fire" into my posts where there is none. My point was purely that making each of our spec decisions a function of the spec decisions of our class-mates is not a bug but a feature. That does mean that I'm unhappy with the current superiority of fire, but that's because it's a purely dominant strategy, not because the bolts are red or I want to take the fun out of the class. Just like every priest, druid, warrior, shaman, and warlock in the game, I don't want there to be a single, clearly superior spec that every raider of class X must adopt to contribute optimally. If that means the death of Ignite Teams, well, so be it.

why kill ignite teams then? Why not just creat maybe frostbite teams to go along and synergize with? Would make the new spell icelance useful as well. With melee and other damage constanly pelting the target, we all know that frostbite would not be overpowered if it were made to be a debuff that could proc on bosses seperate from the immobile effect. I dont know about you but I absolutely hate any nerf to my class whether it is to the spec I use or not.

I agree that fire is too dominant right now in PvE and that's not a good thing. But why not add more utility or design fights were frost's slowing/survival shines just like fire's ignites shine on fights like Loatheb? Why make it so that in raids fire mages now spam fireballs while frost mages spam frostbolts...that is not interesting or creative.

Guys, this thread is getting very strange for my taste. (WARNING: PASSIONATE POST AHEAD)

Frost has a lot of stuff going for it - the only real AoE kiting class in the game (CoC overlaps with 3/3 Permafrost. Add in improved Blizzard and you have amazing aoe mob control), your very own private PW:S that stacks (unlike VW sacrifice), the ability to wipe all debuffs and become immune to damage (a total lifesaver when learning new content or even living long enough to actually deal your damage), and so on. With trash mobs getting harder and harder, and larger and larger aoe pulls, wouldn't you prefer a permafrost improved blizzard mage holding down all the mobs while other classes aoe on top of the hailstorm? Or would you like a warlock running in and hellfiring and just trying to heal him through all the damage?

And Winter's Chill IS the raid-boss version of Shatter. Would I like it to be buffed a tad? Sure. But the talent is there.

Honestly, guys. I just don't understand all the red/blue/white color nonsense. The trees are very different. Their abilities are very different too. All talents are not good in every scenario, just like every other class.

OF COURSE Frost will take a hit against single-target mobs. It is the premier AoE talent/class in the entire game (there are no classes or talent choices that can duplicate the ZG croc farming or any of the aoe stuff from the Faxmonkey vids). It has so much survivability it makes it worth it - if that is what you want. You can kill big elites easier than any other class solo. If those things don't interest you, then my goodness, people, don't be a frost mage. If you want big single-target damage, blah blah go fire. If you want crazy burst and fancy tricks but bad mana consumption, go arcane.

But saying that at this point, the only thing that differentiates the trees is the color (!!!) of the nuke you are spamming - well that's just idiocy.


Stop it, fellow mages. I beg you.

I reject your premise. So many of the changes being made to every class are designed to make every tree successful in every aspect of the game. Why should mages be limited to certain specs for certain aspects of the game?

I play a priest, a druid and a mage. And let me tell you, the mage trees are by a far the most similar. I have not played all classes but it could very well be that mages have the most uniform trees of all of them. Now, that has advantages - you can spec any tree and be useful on raids. But you cannot deny the downsides.

It seems to you the big difference is that frost can Blizzard kite. That is a novelty that you rarely if ever do outside of farming. And even then, only for specific farming. Fire mages farm just fine.

I have been deep every tree, and yes to me the difference between fire and frost in a raid setting is mainly the color of the bolt. Do I care if my nuke applies a +crit or a +damage debuff on the mob? Not really. Do I care that one nuke has a dot and the other slows? Not really, especially since nothing can be slowed anyway.

Lets look at a non-resist based dungeon. AQ40. Where exactly does the playstyle differ? On Skekeam? No. On the bug trio? Ice Block is nice if your depoisoners are slow but that does not affect the nuke you are using - fire can still have Ice Block. And at the end of the day the difference is negligible. Satura? You could dodge 2 cleaves with Ice Block and thats it. Fankriss? Doesnt matter at all. Huhuran? Ice Block can be nice there. Twin Emps? Doesnt matter. C'Thun? Ice Block doesnt hurt. Your nuke doesn't matter.

Notice a trend there? The only difference in AQ40 is Ice Block. One talent. The rest is hogwash. AoE wise both specs perform about the same, especially with one mage with imp Blizzard. Single target damage is delivered pretty much the same way.

Exactly. I don't have to be optimal as a frost mage. I have to be viable. I don't have to be even close to the "best" at anything, but if other members of your class in your guild stare in wonderment at you selecting a particular spec because it, obvious to everyone, is such a poor performer compared to other options in any particular aspect of the game, that spec is broken.

Fire mages probably aren't the "best" spec for a PvP mage or for soloing elite single mobs in the game world, but no one laughs at them or thinks they're morons for choosing that spec. They can bring the pain, quickly. Currently, its looking like if you choose frost and you raid, you are a moron, sacrificing 26% (Thanks Lhivera) of your potential DPS and 3% of your DPM. It doesn't take a genius to see that thats messed up. You're choosing a spec has the potential to slow your entire guild's raid advancement by being incredibly much less useful at one's primary role as a mage, damage.

Untrue, and you know it.

SL lock with Felguard = Stay away in PvP. In raiding? Ehhh, lower damage production. Reverse for Incinerate locks.
Holy Priest sustained dps and utility vs Shadow Priest sustained dps and utility. Clear winner, guess which? How about for healing? Healing clearcast, larger heals that cost less mana and cast faster? Sounds like one is better than the other for a certain job.
Rogues - PvP talent choice and PvE talent choice the same? Each tree equally good at raiding AND ganking? I think not.
Warriors - Which dps tree scales with gear better? Which one requires you to ramp up to full speed and thus is somewhat limited in PvP use?

The trees are there to make you make choices. So, choose. You want Frost to be the absolute sickest soloing class (which it is now and will continue to be in TBC), have the best defenses against problem PvP matchups (IceBlock the Noobcoil, CS the fear and win), AND do single-target raid dps matching the Fire tree? Ummm, no.

Guys, I love the frost tree too. There are some dogs at the bottom of it now, hopefully that will be changed. But all the stuff about it being gimpy or needs to do the same dps as fire just doesn't make any sense.


EDIT:

To Heidi:

If you primarily are a soloer who loves to do the 5-mans with his buddies (even on ultra-hard mode), frost will appeal to you a great deal. If you are like me and a min/max person, you go where the min/max talents happen to be. And that, right now, is either 40arc/21frost (Primarily arcane mage that has iceblock and a nice long-range kiting nuke when needed) or some form of deep fire setup. The same as if you are a min-maxer raiding rogue you don't stick all your points in improving stealth and ambush. But you might if you lived and breathed gank style PvP. What your post says is that you want everything, and that just isn't feasible. If that 26% is so huge that the extra survivability and utility (kiting/elemental/shatter/AoE) means nothing to you, then the frost tree just isn't for you. If you can live with that 26% limitation, and really really want the advantages that frost brings to the things you enjoy, then spec frost. The balance is already there.

If you ask me the whole problem is how one-dimensional the raiding game is.

Frost's strengths just cannot matter in raiding when nothing can be slowed or frostbitten or shattered and when you have a battalion of healers so you don't need to rely on ice block and ice barrier. If they fix _this_, then hey, much more fun raiding overall AND a much more raid viable frost tree. If they just up the damage of the frost tree... well, yawn.

I hate to get this going again. But please point out where Lhiv or I requested the "same dps as fire" or "single-target raid dps matching the Fire tree?"

About 3 or 4 pages back we asked for better DPM and a little better DPS. Fire winning both counts is not really acceptable. Winning DPS, as Lhiv has calculated, by more than 25%, while still doing better DPM is really messed up.

Fire and frost as-is would, of course, be instantly acceptable if frost could benefit from shatter in raids. Though, deep frost would still have dogs for talents.

No one, especially on this board, is asking to be the best aoe snarer, dps, dpm, all-instant cast mage of owningness. We're making reasonable points about the relative merit of two trees in the mage talents. I don't think we're even remotely approaching "the sky is falling." Yet, simple factual statements or beliefs about what ought to be are rejected outright as if we are on the WoW boards and frost mages everywhere are calling for huge nerfs to fire.

I posted earlier today about how the change to Ignite is lame. I've never once used it that I recall. That doesn't matter to me. Playstyle, especially fun playstyle changes are sad and make me annoyed when they happen to any class. The Ignite nerf (if this really is one) is an example of reducing the fun of a fire mage. Bummer. Thats all I can say.

Frost mage does alot less DPS than a fire mage in a raid situation, as best we can tell. Bummer. All the "zomg fire mages rulez0r, you can't take away our burningness" responses that entirely exaggerate a poster's point or request so its easier to argue against (when there isn't really any argument being offered by the original poster...) really start to wear thin to me.

I think everyone can agree that 50% of the new frost talents are utter crap. If those were useful things would look much better.

Maybe a talent that makes frostbite/shatter work on bosses somehow. Now that would be tasty.

EDIT: And I think a lot of the flames (punpunpun) started flying when the only solutions proposed to fix frost were to nerf fire down to current frost crappiness. Can't blame a fire mage for not being too happy about suggesting to remove molten fury or to nerf pyromaniac into the ground.