You avoided the point. What do fire mages get to help offset the ignite change? You know to balance it.

- Current mage, waiting for the expansion to level my BE warlock :)

Well the answer seems simple enough. Have both a max level mage and lock. Then you can play the class that isn't currently "nerfed" until the coin flips again. Thats the problem with flavor of the month classes. First rogue, then hunters, now mages and warriors. Maybe locks are taking their turn next? From what Kalgan has said I don't think mages are going to be too badly off. Just have some patience.

Your retarded = My reasonable tradeoff for being the most squishy.

Molten Fury, Emp Fireball, Playing With Fire, and Molten Armor. The important things to remember are:

1: Look at the whole picture. One aspect may get nerfed, but others will get buffed. In theory it balances out.
2: If you try to defend an overpowered mechanic (and stackable rolling ignites are definitely overpowered), you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
3: No class is getting a huge boost from the expansion. Every class gains something in the expansion, but they also lose something too. We'll come out ahead, but anyone who expects to suddenly find themselves soloing Molten Core (yes, this is hyperbole) is not looking at the expansion in a realistic manner.

Life will be easier in the Xpac. I have confirmed this on the beta server. However, life will not be easymode.

Do some of you really think fire should receive a buff due to the ignite change? The mechanic was obviously imbalanced and any claims that they should massively buff another potential area of the tree is just merely whining that our fire tree isn't overpowered. To make matters worse, you needed merely 6 points in Fire to keep that ignite going for ridiculous damage. If that doesn't seem overly powerful to you then I'm at a loss for what to say. Ignites are being fixed, you're still getting 210% damage on crits.

In a raid pretty much every class save Warriors and Paladins are squishy. What's your point? Warlocks get smacked down just as easily as us.

Multiple mages stacking one ignite is overpowered. If each mage got their own ignite stack with the current mechanic it would be fine and fun.

Squishy is part of the PvP balance. Not the PvE balance. However, Warlocks can be great AoE tanks.

Remove the double dipping too. As long as I have incentive to try to crit 2x in one ignite duration then it would still be at least somewhat fun. Fun needs to be preserved while balance is achieved. Else there is no point in playing the game anymore besides social reasons.

Blink, Iceblock, Frost Nova, Water Elemental, Blastwave, Ice Armor

Who is the squishy? Certainly not mages.

Someone ask Kimmuriel to post some BG screen shots. Doesn't he go 300-0 when spec'd frost?

It's also good to hear some mages I respect admitting ignite, in its current form, is broken. It's like pulling teeth to get mages to admit that.

Despite the changes that are being talked about, the mage class still has a lot to offer and serves very unique rolls in terms of the breadth of abilities it brings to a raid.

For what it's worth, I've yet to hear of someone who's seriously geared who's thinking of re-rolling prior to tBC due to ignite being fixed. As far as I'm concerned that's a tell tale sign. If there was a pending mage exodous, like we're seeing with rogues (survey the top rogues in the top guilds for further support), I'd be more concerned for the class.

I've settled in. The threat reduction nerf was the biggest thing to get used to. I pull aggro like a motherfucker now. In five mans it's almost comical but hey, blazing speed. I still don't know how Dragon's Breath = shaman rage thingy but after doing numerous respecs I've missed it everytime I've been without it. It's become an essential part of my solo/small group playstyle. If they were aiming for essential over cool with the 41 points they've achieved it for me.

My main gripe is 1v1 and arena pvp. I absolutely feel like a liability in a part of the game that appeals to me. I'm thinking make a different toon my arena guy and rolling with it.

Bad example really. At 20-0 in WSG or AB pugs I know groups start gunning for me, so it becomes a case of whether you have healers and how many people are actively targeting you. In AV I like looking for that person with 0 deaths, I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Agreed.

Don't know how geared you consider
http://ctprofiles.net/1777710

The current invisibility and the "overbalancing" of a multitude of our new skills are what has me thinking of re-rolling. Not one thing but a bunch of things. Sort of the straw that breaks the camel's back. Definantly going to get to 70 before making any real decision.

I will clarify. Mages aren't broken in the expansion. Mages look to be mostly fine. A few other classes are broken and need some things nerfed. However, this doesn't look to be happening. Call it flavor of the month or what you will but I don't see why you shouldn't play one of the more broken classes other than the fact that they will some day get nerfed 2 years from now.

Mages are usually pretty fun.

My only gripe about TBC as far as mages is the PvP viability. Our PvE was fine and even over the top with ignite double dips and such. I am not worried about mages being replaced in PvE anytime soon. I am just kinda bummed out about specifically arena PvP. Being on a server cluster with 1hr + queue times, I was looking forward to arenas and PvPing much more. I was hoping to get some help against ranged dps in this area but CS got nerfed and as hard as I try to sketch out practical situations where spellsteal or invisibility may bail me out in PvP, I am at a loss.

That's probably my biggest complaint I guess about TBC. They give warlocks who already dominate casters, things like 30% passive chance to go immune to fire while we get things like frozen core and arctic winds =/

The threat reduction really isn't as big a deal as people are making it out to be. Unless I'm mistaken, Invisibility can be used midfight while you evocate, so that's a great deal of threat wiped mid encounter. We have passive threat reduction lost, however the only times I've seen people pull off a good tank in Naxx was due to Ignite training out of control early on in a pull (or on Thaddius, ick). Combine this with the fact that Horde will have Blessing of Salvation and with raids being 2-5 groups there is a higher chance of casters also getting a Tranquil Air totem. I've seen our Frost mages do Naxx with pvp specs lacking Frost Channeling, I don't expect this to really affect people as much as they think.

That being said, I still prefer active threat reductions similar to the one Warlocks get in BC which can be used at will rather than with a charge up period.

No. Just no. I'm having PROBLEMS in capital letters on the beta server. My crit rate has actually gone up with my +damage staying steady in the 370ish range. It might be that Burning Soul is coupled with the rage gen problems warriors are experiencing but every single group I've been in has devolved into me pulling aggro and running around like an idiot; a fun idiot with Blazing Speed and Impact off of Molten Armor but an idiot nonetheless. This is with me holding back more and more as I adjust to the dynamics of the new threat game. If we were overcompensated in threat reduction before we're undercompensated now. Rather than 10% on Burning Soul I think it should be 20% for a nice in between number.

And let's not compare raid threat to five man trash threat. The trash in BC is no shit, eat your soul stuff (hi2u mana tombs explosive mana guys) but you're not going to sit there and wait for an assist call like it's molten giant v2.0 in 2005.

I don't know why you have so much problems with agro. If it was so than on my old mage pre mage patch with 280ish dmg I would have pulled agro a lot. I didn't have any threat reduction talents, yet I managed with my troll. I don't see why you'd be having so much problems with agro with only 370 dmg?

In response to post #847
But I've already shown the "wrongness" in that Nurru.

Mage Threat reduction:
SELF CAST (Not Channel, unless the video's I've watched were bugged)
It has also been mentioned that the timer finishes counting down once a spell is finally cast.
Also, a blue has confirmed that the aggro reduction occurs over time, stepping down during each tick, rather than a pure 100% reduction at the end of the channel.
So, Cast Invis (1.5s, 18.75% aggro redux right off the bat)
Cast Frostbolt (2.5s, 31.25% aggro redux during the cast time)
Let's be honest, add 0.5s lag in between GCD and Frostbolt starting.
so, 4.5s of aggro reduction, or 56.25%. for the EXACT same amount of time as a Warlock.

Edit: I just noticed it's over 8seconds, not 10seconds. So my %'s were off. They are now all correct.


So:
Mage Threat reduction:
Self Cast
56.25% If casting a Frostbolt afterwards (more if Fireball / Pyroblast) (With the option of 100%, and phase out, unlike Warlock)

Warlock Threat reduction:
1.5sec.
50%
Requires: Soul Shard



Don't think it's too bad, really

It would help if you quoted my post, but I assume you're referring to me mention a charge period for Invis. For that I was simply saying that it was something we'd want to save for when we're Evocating otherwise we're wasting more dps time dropping threat. We already waste 8 seconds to Evocation, why waste more? As for chaining it with a bolt, it's not a bad idea but unless we face encounters like learning Broodlord the first time it's likely better to use the Evoc route.

That being said, both solutions aren't very ideal in a situation where aggro is pulled. Perhaps the mage can hit Invisibility and run to the tank. But in most cases I don't expect it to be usable in that manner, especially with the present damage and action restrictions.

Sometimes I've had BoSalv, yes. I've taken to doing a couple Arcane Blasts myself to tone it down a bit. The only thing I can figure is that with Molten Armor up I'm sitting at roughly 34% to crit with my fireballs (more with scorch/fireblast) so it's more boom. This is bearing in mind that I'm not 70 so don't have Invis yet; this may just be a byproduct of having the lesser aggro reduction + higher crit before Invis hits.

I can't be the only one NOT surprised you're pulling aggro.

Isn't todays "good" fire mage gear hovering around 26% or so? That's quite the boost, if I'm not horribly mistaken. You should expect to be pulling aggro if you're raiding in an at all similar way :P

When I quit, I had 26% crit with fireball and 648 +dmg... With the best naxx gear you can get around 30% with 700ish damage.


@Viator
Shouldn't your crit be scaling down as you level past 60? Are you using stuff like gloves of spell mastery since you have 34% crit and 370 damage?

You'd think I'd be scaling down but I'm not. Everyone else says they are so I can't figure it out.

According to Blizzard's UI I'm at 29.19% base on fire. Tack on Molten Armor, 32.19% (off by a couple percentage points). Scorch/Fireblast another 4%. Gearwise I'm nothing special; Mishundare's the best piece of gear I had coming in with a mix of Tier 2 and dps drops from MC (Mana Igniting Cord). The only thing I can figure is that you pick up ALOT of stuff with sub 1% crit on it. .8 here, .67 there, tack on a few gems... it just adds up. I think it's natural for people to overlook that stuff on a cursory look see, even bypassing it in favor of another +5 stamina on an armor piece. I didn't and still invested in as much crit as I could get my hands on, no matter how small, and it's made for a pretty well rounded set. I don't feel gimp with regards to either stamina or int and have maintained my dps nicely. Maybe too nicely. :)