I think people stoped doing it after BC release, it was only efficient when rogue had only 1 vanish as anti kiting tool or when you could acutally sheep a rogue to make a clean start. In a 1v1 situation now you'd better throw as many instant as possible. When we get Brain Freeze (they should change the name , now it doesn't make any sens), it may be usefull but will prevent any CC (like a blind to start a fresh stunlock) I have been considering taking that glyph just to remove the dot.

In the context of raiding, the Frostbolt Glyph is balanced, and probably equal parts brilliant and retarded. I think an issue with it that's not being (directly) addressed is that people who use frost spec for control playstyles don't have a Glyph for their main spell, while fire spec does. In the context of min-max raiding the frostbolt glyph is good. In some objective sense it's balanced in that it's giving up the benefit in return for the penalty it used to pay for that benefit. But, if you're building a frost build around slowingness (which is a valid playstyle for PvP of all venues, grinding, 5-mans, and possibly 10-mans), you don't have a major Glyph on your primary spell, which is sad. The slowing effect on snare is something that shadow priests of any flavor could live without in any venue; the frostbolt glyph is hyper-specialized. Adding disadvantages in a redesign of a spell is ok, but adding the glyph takes away not only the main effect of a spec's main spell, but also the effect that you would choose that spec for. In the absence of another Glyph affecting Frostbolt (which, considering the design of Inscription, would basically have to be Glyph of Frostbite, not Other Glyph of Frostbolt), that means that many varieties of frost mages cannot recieve much benefit from inscription.

I'll reinforce that point more succinctly: (under current implimentation) a mage who builds frost for the snares gets far less benefit from Inscription than any other spec of any class I've seen because they cannot glyph their main spell. The comparable situation for enchanting would be if there were fire and arcane spellpower weapon enchants, but not only no frost enchant but also no generic spellpower enchant (to make the analogy even more comparable, there are still glove enchants, and somehow frost-spec FFB with a +fire enchant is viable in raids but nowhere else).

One key area where this analogy breaks down however, as pointed out by a few others, is how that slowing effect is supported in the tree. No other Shadow priest talents or abilities support the slowing function of Mindflay, whereas the chill effect is a central component to much of the Frost tree, such that at least 11 points in the tree are built around the fact the frost's primary nuke has a chill effect. For shadow priests the slow certainly has it's uses, but there's nothing else building or relying on the presence of the slow to be useful.

Which is exactly my point. All the other disadvantages other Glyphs add are valid tradeoffs, since it's affecting the "added" utility. The Frostbolt Glyph is removing something that is commonly the "core" utility, depending on venue, which is what leaves Frost without a mainline Glyph in those venues. The more comparable Glyphs are actually the Healing Touch and Moonfire ones.

I wouldn't agree that hybrids get screwed out of being hybrids if they can't respec. Hybrid, to me, doesn't mean that you can respec to perform a new role. It means that you can perform additional roles regardless of spec, though the degree of competency in a given role will depend on how focused your spec is. In fact, the Spell Power change will greatly improve the ability of many healing classes to heal when they are not specced for it, thus reducing their need to respec in order to behave as a hybrid.

There's a balance to be struck. At one end of the scale you've got a situation where you can't ever change your talent specs at all; if you get bored, you reroll. At the other end, respeccing is so cheap and easy that there might as well not be specs at all, because everyone effectively can use the most optimal spec for every situation without suffering drawbacks. Blizzard has always shot for something in the middle. My prediction is that the compromise they're currently aiming for will feature everyone having access to two specs that you can switch between for no or little cost, probably on a short to moderate cooldown -- and that respeccing outside these two specs will become rather more costly than it is right now, such that the gold cost and additional costs (reglyphing, reenchanting, etc) will probably feel like a similar expense at 80 as 50g did at 60.

That's just my prediction. I'm not going to get into an argument about why it should or shouldn't be this way, I'm just sealing that prediction into the envelope now, and we'll see what happens when it happens.


Please note that I'm not arguing that the Frostbolt glyph is going to cripple the Frost Mage's ability to solo or level or do daily quests or anything like that. I'm just arguing that it's going to mess up the way the Frost Mage wants to solo, level, quest, etc. I kind of feel like a guy who's played jazz trumpet for thirty years being told, "Hey, it's OK that you won't be able to play jazz trumpet anymore after next month, because you can still play Sousa marches." It's true, but not very appealing.

There's no question we can work around the glyph if we have to; the question is whether we should have to.


Note, though, that Fire Mages are receiving an instant-cast DOT which can serve that purpose better (and more painfully).


Actually, it kind of does, in a weird way. You get an ice cream headache, you want to warm up fast to make it go away. It now refers to your brain, as the caster, rather than the target's.

Guess that means they plan to have talents finished and more or less balanced 'soon' :O
Kinda hope they wont rush it through so we end up with broken or unbalanced stuff again. There still seem to be some way to go.

I think a 3.0 was guaranteed even before this announcement. It just makes sense from a support standpoint to separate the release of the talent trees and new mechanics from the release of the new content. Spreads the bug reports and bugfixes around, rather than an all-at-once possible crippling of the game if something was missed in beta.

I'm a little concerned with the "coming weeks" verbiage though. Beta is currently nowhere near ready for prime time. Hopefully "weeks" is more like 15 and not 6. I would've been happier to see "months". I mean, most of the mage's new defining talents aren't even implemented yet, and we're far from the only class in that state. I know Blizzard won't release things in their current state, but I'm worried if they wait for the last minute to implement some things and then push them live too quickly after, there won't be time to find bugs and balance issues with those fresh implementations.

I too hope 3.0 is a fair way off. Months (emphasis on the plural) is preferable.

This is awesome, we also get whines when we get buffs.

It has been mentioned elsewhere, but WAR is also being released 'next month' around the same time as this patch. Coincidence....? Its quite obvious the beta isnt release-ready, especially with regards to balance. It appears (this content patch) will be quickly tied up and pushed out the door.

Im looking forward to testing out the new talents. Even though Sunwell/BT have become pretty repetitive, it will be fun and fresh to play around with various talent builds and experiment with the new group/raid synergy design.

Whoa whoa whoa. Blizzard has never been happy with pushing things out the door that the developers don't consider ready, and conspiracy theories involving competing MMO's have been frequent and constant pretty much during WoW's entire run. My concern is that things to be implemented in the coming weeks may get too little testing before being pushed live, not that Blizzard is going to shoot itself in the foot by pushing things as they are now.

Have you already forgotten patch 2.0? I know I was so disgusted I stopped playing for a month because of all the insane one shotting people were doing, not that it prevented them from patching in a imbalanced talent set.

Is anyone else really worried about the spirit issue as it relates to mage itemization in the expansion? I have been holding out hope for a major review of our various armor spells, but with the recent anouncement that they will be releasing 3.0 "Soon" I am somewhat less optemistic.

One of my major complaints about mage itemization has always been the prevalence of spirit on every piece of gear even when it is relatively useless for two of our three trees. Molten Armor is typically better DPS making it preferable for any group function. Molten Armor combined with Impact or Ice Armor with Frostbite are typically better for PVP due to their snares. This makes Mage Armor best for what? Farming motes?

All the gear I have seen from WotLK seems to indicate that they are doing with spirit what they did with stamina in Outland. At this point the vast amount of itemization points spent on spirit seems to necessitate that every mage spec 18 points deep into the arcane tree lest they be forced to use Mage Armor.

You are forced into a situation where you trade DPS armor for sustainability armor. With all those talent points and glyphs that improve your Water Elemental (for example) does a deep frost mage necessitate additional sustainability? If not, then all that spirit is just a complete waste. Before this wasn't nearly as frustrating because I could just pick up "warlock gear" instead, but now that spirit is useful to warlocks (more useful than it is to most mages by the way), even that option has escaped our grasp.

None of this is game breaking, of course. I am not going to delete my mage tomorrow or reroll. I just felt the need to express my concern over this issue. The issue has been around since original beta (even more so since they changed Evocation) and it just seems too easy to fix to have been ignored for so long. I was just wondering if anyone else felt the same way.

Putting aside the idea that Mage buffs do not necessarily make this game any more fun to play, I'd like to see where you read a 'whine'? I can't find it.

My own post is less directly aimed at what a 3.0 means for the Mage class in a Sunwell raiding environment, and more a directly aimed thought at how 3.0 will change the 'entire' raiding environment. Barring the issue of R14 Fireball I haven't even begun to think about what 3.0 means specifically for a raiding mage. Things change so often on Beta that topical concerns over 3.0 bear far greater weight for me at present than class specific ones.

As others have said, time is needed to ensure a balance is reached. I also won't deny I wish to see KJ die before implementation of 3.0, but that is a more personal goal. I'd much rather see my wider concerns addressed in some manner.

My concern is only for how things have the potential for dramatic change, and the effects of such dramatic change (remember 2.0 and the chaos that resulted in?). I can only hope Blizzard delay 3.0 long enough to ensure such a balance is reached, because as another poster mentioned, things will likely stay the same until Lick King goes live.

On the official WoW forums, quite a long time ago, there were some posters who liked to post an "Automated Response Against Trivializing Talents". In it was some "Learn to play" insults, a link, and a list of posts all by blue CMs on the talent design philosophy and on free and common respecs. I can no longer find the text on the WoW Forums search, I suppose it gets deleted after 1.5, 2 years, but I have the quotes saved:



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This has been addressed many times before and I have to tell you, the answer is still "no" to both for the same reasons we've always given. There should be real investment into choosing a spec and reducing the cost or making it easy to do simple swaps would make the whole purpose moot.
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As has been stated earlier in this thread, the respec cost is there to deter the very sort of quick, situational switching you describe. The designers want to encourage sticking to a particular spec -- while you can switch depending on situations, there is a high cost. This is an intentional design decision and not something planned to change to my knowledge.
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If you choose to spec -- spec being short for specialize, mind you -- in PvE-related enhancements through talents, then that is your decision. If you choose to specialize in PvP, that is also your decision. If you desire to do both well, you can spread your talent points out if you so choose. If you absolutely must be at the top of the game in all situations, you can do so -- but you must pay for the privilege.

It is the intent of talent points to make your decisions matter; if they were free or low cost, these decisions would not have as much impact.
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I play a Restoration Druid -- over 40 points in the tree. I know well the sacrifices made when you specialize in PvE group play. It takes a great deal of time for me to solo anything, and in PvP I tend to outlast while someone else does the killing as opposed to doing any damage.

Yet those are the choices we make. If you wish to play in groups in PvE, the same mechanic can apply to PvP -- mind you, it's much harder, as the majority of people prefer to go off on their own in PvP rather than function as a group. By the same token, if you specialize in PvP, you'll do fantastic solo but suffer group-wise in primary roles.

If you want to do both, you can use your points equally among the talents and share the wealth -- but it won't be optimal. These choices are weighty decisions, and they're meant to be. If you could return to the trainer to respec after a Molten Core raid with little to no cost and jump right into Arathi Basin, your choices hold no real weight whatsoever. It's a level of customizing your character -- talents are not meant to be sloughed off like gear whenever you need to do something else.
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It is a conscious game design decision, Agios. What you speak of in other games are also design decisions made by their own designers. World of Warcraft's talents can significantly sway the power of a character, and as such, the designers made it so that the choices made when leveling up would have weight.

Being unable to change them at all would not be preferable, but at the same time, they wanted this level of customization to be something players stuck with, only occasionally switching their talents around. That is why the prohibitive cost is there.

The developers know how players feel about respec costs, however, for the time being there are no plans to change them. This is an integral part of class balance.
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When we were first implementing talents, there were many people who wanted no ability to respec, similar to Diablo II. People claimed that this gave their characters uniqueness and definition.

The ability to spec your character is one of the ways a player has to differentiate their character from others of the same class. Choosing talents also creates hard decisions for players. Sure you could be doing more DPS but did you just give up survivablity? Decisions like that.

We realized that the Diablo system of no respeccing was far too punishing and permanent for World of Warcraft yet at the same time we wanted your talent decisions to carry weight.

It's a very difficult balancing act. We know some players would be able to respec on the fly, nightly. But that's not really character definition at that point. Our goal is not for Talent Respecs to serve as a gold sink. The price is simply there to make you think twice before changing your character on a whim.

I know this might not be the answer some of you are looking for, but I wanted to at least share some of the design philosophy behind this decision.

The philosophy has clearly changed since then. Once respecs became effectively very inexpensive and Blizzard and the playerbase realized it wasn't the end of the world, they changed their minds a bit.

This is getting off topic, but anyway. They haven't outright said they want instant flexibility in every area, but there are plenty of tea leaves with lots of posts indicating that they want you to be able to bring your friends and not be suboptimal which leads me to believe that they want hybrids to be able to spec into the role that the raid needs to get things going.

The assumption that allowing two easy access specs to merely allow two different types of the SAME spec by hamstringing you with inscription costs is dubious at best. This would assume that the complaint from players is JUST that they have to switch between pve and pvp, and ignoring the plight of paladins and others who switch roles in the middle of pve.

Of course only time will reveal who is right, so pursuing this discussion further at this time is mostly fruitless.

100% agree. This is something they have to fix, but seems atm they dont care.
I cant find any valid argument to why Blizzard dosnt want to make spirit more attractive to fire and frost mages.

I also wonder how the insane difference in armors will affect scaling between mages and locks. >300 +dmg and 30% regen versus 3% crit is a huge difference. I really hope they forgot our armors, and rework them in next patch.

Respecs became effectively inexpensive due to the economy's progression. The respec cost has simply been unchanged rather than actively made cheap. Respeccing is still expensive to non-70 players depending on which level and how many times you've specced--to raise the gold cap on talent respecs due to the massive gold income of level 70s would unfairly hurt new players who might play around with talent points, respeccing often to see what they like. Hands-off has always been the approach of the development team unless the concern is strong enough to warrant a hotfix or overhaul. I'd argue that rather than a "clear" abandonment of the old talent philosophy, the devs rather felt that the frivolity that many players treated respecs with was not enough to warrant them going and changing the respec fee cap, but that they would hold off until they could think of a better solution to discourage easy spec dropping.

That's all I'll say on this off-topic point.

As to the Spirit concern and our Armors, take a look at Glyph of Mage Armor. That Glyph brings your Mage Armor to 50% of your Spirit-based mana regeneration while casting.

That doesn't fix the issue at all though, it just exacerbates it. How are we being balanced - with the 3% crit from Molten, or the 30% mana regen from Mage? Warlocks have both their regen and damage armours in one spell, we have to chose, and neither of ours is as good as the sum total of their one armour.

The main worry I have is scaling - mages simply don't get as much out of spirit as warlocks, and as we can see there's tons of spirit on every item. That's going to cause problems in WotLK, as we gear up and get more and more spirit, as we simply don't benefit from it, whereas warlocks are getting more and more. That might sound stupid, but Blizzard themselves said that it was Warlock scaling that got out of hand in TBC - and that's exactly what will happen again unless they start to bake in some decent uses for spirit into the class.

(It's also worth bearing in mind that mana regen for mages tends to be binary - either we have enough to do our damage cycle, or we don't and run out. For warlocks, you can add in huge amounts of mana and each additional bit of regen improves their DPs as they have to lifetap less. That's not the case for mages currently - if they leave living bomb as is, then it might become the way we work as well, but still won't affect frost).

I can't understand the panic about 3.0 So what if tbc raiding goes crazy? Its not like the gear will mater in a while and maybe more people get to see sunwell. Remember what they did to the high warlord gear?

Sure wotlk might not be bug free, but content wise there isn't to much work left to be done. Some minor balance issues and class tuning.

To me its fine if they do that while we level up to 80.

My only concern about 3.0 is which spec i should raid Sunwell with :P

So far, i am thinking something along the lines of 0/53/8.