Infraction for Kel S'jet: Useless Post

Kaubel · 08/07/08, 12:45 PM

Post: [Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion
User: Kel S'jet
Infraction: Useless Post
Points: 1

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

Oh look....something that should have been edited into your previous post, and might not have sucked so bad if it didn't make some whiny assumptions.

Original Post:

Oh look...mages got a blue post. Unfortunately, it doesn't really have that much substance

There are some significant Fire changes coming in an upcoming build, I'll see if I can get the web team to update the calculator.

Fire is intended to do compelling single target damage, as it's traditionally been. When first designing the classes, we always intended the Mage to be the king of AOE and for AOE to be an important part in the game. Living Bomb, and other talents in the tree are intended to bring the Mage back in line with our original vision. Part of what pegged the Mage down a notch was Seed of Corruption, which ended up being better than we anticipated.

That said, again, we do want Fire to be a strong single target DPS spec along with Frost and Arcane. Frost is not intended to be the Mages "PvP spec" and Fire isn't intended to be the "PvE spec," they only turned out that way because of unintended factors. We're trying to make Frost more viable in raiding by allowing you to effectively freeze the target without having to nova it, allowing you to throw in some "shatter combos" in your rotation. Arcane, Frost, and Fire (and a mix thereof) should all more or less be viable in as many aspects of the game as possible. Where they should be different is in playstyle and gameplay differences (stacking Scorch vs. freezing and shatter etc.).

AOE will be more prevalent in encounters in the game, yes. However, Fire mages are assuming they're being converted into a pure AOE spec, which is not the case. We want the strong AOE to just be a feature of the Fire Mage. The Fire Mage doesn't need a new single target DPS nuke or ability as a 51-point talent in order to continue to be a good single target DPS class.

source: WoW Forums -> Where are we headed with the Fire tree?

Not exactly the insight I was hoping for. We already knew blizzard is trying to shove "AoE kings" down mages throats. Unfortunately (and maybe I don't speak for every mage) I don't really care THAT much for being an AoE king. (after all, I don't think if you went up to rogues and said "You guys are the lock picking kings! and we will make high end raiding encounters *cough* suppression room *cough* just so you can show off your elite lockpicking skills" that the rogues would really take it well).

Either way, a disappointing response with little substance.

Less scripted PR answers more real insight please.

Edit:
As a side note, there is a slight problem with blizzard's logic in this regard.
Say we assume that they achieve what they want from the fire tree and that by some magical means, fire mages become the hands down kings of AoE. Lets then assume that there exists some raid encounter in WoTLk that calls for some heavy AoE.
Blizzard now has 2 options

1. Design the encounter in such a way that it requires the raid to have fire mages present.
2. Design the encounter so that it can be accomplished even without a fire mage.

1 is not possible, since blizzard has already made it clear that they do not want to make a specific spec required for a raid.
2 is possible (and the more probable), but at the end of the day, if the encounter could be done without a fire mage anyway, whats the point of having a fire mage there in the first place? Especially if his normal single target dps may/may not be up to scratch.

Some people may argue that there is a 3rd option, that the presence of the fire mage makes the encounter easier. But that is far too grey a term, and it is a concept that is probably harder to balance than anything else since the last thing they want is that the encounter becomes trivial just cause you have a fire mage. If that was the case, given the min/max nature of raiders, this hypothetical 3rd option will just reduce to option 1.

The key thing here is that blizzard is attempting to elevate mages to be the "kings of aoe" through a spec, whereas warlocks are currently kings of aoe through the use of a core ability (which funnily enough has almost no talents that enhance or improve it in any way).

Either way, I think blizzard is working itself into a hole. The first critical issue is that AoE just isn't that important in almost all other aspects of play (solo, grp, pve, pvp, arenas), and only really becomes an issue in very high end raiding. Constructing a class' specs with the idea of having that spec work in such a way that it is pretty much useless in 95% of the game and only really useful when time and effort is put into making an encounter just so that spec can even exist, is, imho, very bad design.

But, as the blue in that post said. There is, apparently, a new iteration of the mage talent trees that are meant to hit a talent calculator near you. I guess, we just have to wait. The show ain't over yet by a long shot it seems.