1) Variable latency is generally accepted as the worst case for getting the FoF "ghost charge" to work, and many people whose latencies regularly vary by 200ms or more have reported success rates of as low as 60%. Consistent low-to-moderate latency connections tend to have the easiest time of getting an ice lance on the third charge. However, this is still not a good situation, since it does not use an established game mechanic (spell flight time) to give a bonus, but instead exploits latency mechanics (a metagamed uncontrollable factor), may change at any time (with a fix to buff/latency handling or further changes to the cast system along the lines of the patch 2.3 cast-queuing changes), and in a raid setting by Lhivera's math is generally considered to not be a worthwhile dps increase for higher levels of gear anyway, since the low-scaling ice lance "wastes" 1.5 seconds during which you could be casting a better-scaled frostbolt which could proc another FoF. Even as low as a 5% failure rate on getting the ghost charge to make that lance a shattered one makes it a poor choice at any gear level. Many things would help make Fingers of Frost more interesting in PvE (rather than functionally just a quite large passive crit bonus) and remove the latency issue, such as a return to making it last a shorter period of time but not be limited by a number of charges. However, Blizzard made the decision during beta to make changes to Frost's new talents in PvP's favor over PvE's whenever there was a conflict between the two, resulting in the current state of Frost today.
2) Frost dps was only about 5-8% behind Fire dps at the T5-6 level of raiding, and even ahead in some fights (Leotheras the Blind being one notable case, as well as having special uses in the encounters with Vashj and Illidan) so it has been established by the game's own history that it is possible for Frost PvE viability to be well within 15% of Fire PvE viability and still not be considered overpowered in PvP. Frost's lower cast-time main nuke is one of its unique features compared to Fire, and giving it a longer cast nuke for use in PvE would remove some of its flavor. A PvE Frost spec is already "required" to drop many PvP Frost talents (including most notably deep freeze), and with the right sort of talent tree design could successfully buff Frost PvE without allowing a PvE Frost mage to be a force in PvP.
Yes you are correct in what you say about frost, but i think you omitted a few important points.
People want frost to be viable dps, but why do they want that so badly when playing it correctly currently its the most boring spec in the game (and if "fixed" would be two buttons, frostbolt/instant fireball, because you are referring to the phantom charge being taken away), because it involves 1 button essentially, unless movement/adds are introduced (much akin to destro at the t6 level, minus the part about being the best dps in the game outside of rogues). I am fully aware that using BF and ice lances decreases my dps if i am frost for some reason while pveing, but i use them anyway, because otherwise its really boring.
I understand wanting all 3 trees to be viable, but currently its more boring then other specs so i guess i am confused as to why anyone would play it given that its boring and horrible.
As i said i have about 50-60 ms and i dont think i have ever had an ice lance not get a charge of FoF under a normal circumstance. I have no idea about higher, i just know the way the queueing works if you have really low ping it could potentially affect you adversely with regards to trying to get a 3rd charge.
Finally i did say that i dont think frost will be within 15% of fire because its difficult to balance, i didn't say it was impossible, i even gave some suggestions that might help. I just still am very skeptical that it will actually happen. You say that frost dps was within a few percent in swp, and that may be true, but another important fact is that mage dps at that gear level, even as fire was like 10% below warlocks, so its not as if frost was in a better place than it is now, its just that fire is competitive pve dps where in swp it wasnt (outside of felmyst where a good mage could do well due to better threat mechanics, which is similar to how mages are able to invis to domination of vezax)
I agree with you that balancing around a mechanic that only works currently due to some latentcy flaws/bugged coding is stupid, but unfortunately its a reality and there are other elements of this game that have been bugged forever, that they choose to balance around instead of fix (i.e. ignite munching)
I understand wanting all 3 trees to be viable, but currently its more boring then other specs so i guess i am confused as to why anyone would play it given that its boring and horrible.
People keep asking this. All I can say is what's been said before: we want both the performance and the playstyle improved. We don't want a one-button spec that performs well enough to be welcome in all forms of raiding. We don't want a more complex and enjoyable playstyle that performs 30% below Fire. We want a more complex and enjoyable playstyle that performs well enough to be welcome in all forms of raiding.
We know Blizzard also wants this. We know they think they can do it without making major changes to the trees, though some of us are skeptical of that specific idea and think it will require something more drastic. We are fully aware that they may give it the ol' college try and not succeed and wait another few months before trying again. We hope that it goes better than that, and many of us see ways in which it could happen.
I agree with you that balancing around a mechanic that only works currently due to some latentcy flaws/bugged coding is stupid, but unfortunately its a reality and there are other elements of this game that have been bugged forever, that they choose to balance around instead of fix (i.e. ignite munching)
That doesn't mean we shrug our shoulders and say it's fine. That just means we keep it on the lists of things that still need to be fixed.
Note also that the two situations aren't really comparable. Say Blizzard says, "OK, we can't fix ignite munching, we'll boost DPS by 1-2% elsewhere to compensate." That's OK, because Ignite munching is pretty consistent regardless of the player or his connection; it's not something you can really deliberately play with to affect your performance.
FoF ghost charges are different. You have some people who can do them 100% of the time, and that gives them a very small DPS increase. But you have other people who can't. Not because they're worse players, but because Comcast (to use a common culprit) has more variable latency in their area.
You can balance DPS around a bug that affects everyone pretty much equally. But you can't balance DPS around where people live or the kind of connection they can afford. In a case like this, you need to balance it around the way the talent is intended to work -- and that means two charges.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
Maybe the developers need to take buffing frost as a challenge: there are a lot of people who say that it can't be done. I think they are smart enough to get it done, but they just have to put theirs minds to it.
The third FoF charge can easily be made to work on pretty much any latency connection. The wording of the talent may have to include a new concept called "spell combo" to explain that the second charge can be a combo. I don't expect it to be changed.
In order to fix frost scaling, something rather drastic needs to be done to the tree as a whole. Improving crit scaling would, in turn, help haste and spellpower scaling.
However, remember that there are two parts to a critical strike: a chance to do more damage, and the amount of bonus damage. So far, no class has critical strike damage that scales with gear - perhaps that would be an interesting way to improve frost's crit scaling?
The other thing that perhaps could be an asset is finding a way for the Elemental to become more interesting, instead of an effectively passive damage buff.
Yes I see that you would like an improved playstyle and I think ideally that would be the cast, it just seems strange that people are attached to frost (maybe its some sort of lvl 60 or lvl 70 nostalgia?) when its currently a boring and terrible spec. If it sounded like i was saying dont fix it i did not intend that, i just mean people are basically asking a lot given they want it to A. be better dps B. Be more fun C. not ruin frost pvp (ruin in the sense of make too good in this case, i dont support anyone being overpowered, me or others)
I would love it fixed also, i just am guessing it wont be significantly in this expansion, because there are so many balance issues with other classes also.
I dont think shrugging shoulders and accepting that FoF works differently for everyone is good either, i think my inital point (I have typed a lot on boards today but i think thats what i was getting at) was to try to clear up what seemed like misinformation coming from people saying there was some special timing you had to use to get the "ghost" charge. To me that sounded like they were trying to make them land at the same time because they thought that crits were calculated when the spell hits the character.
I was trying to say they are calculated when cast, and I guess i went off on tangents on FoF / ice lance stuff. I just didnt' want people casting frostbolt and waiting a half second to try to get the lance to land at the same time when that has nothing to do with the mechanics.
Finally I forgot to mention earlier that i was thinking about other ways to buff frost that wouldnt be so detrimental to arena stuff and I thought if they could incorporate something like sniper training for hunters (more dmg / crit / etc when standing still) or something like the power circle given by the muru trinket, which helps pve dps but not pvp because usually you should have to move.
Maybe they could even get crazy and have frost mages drop some series of buffs (power circle like things)e ground that they could utilize in rotation for various effects, obviously that could get complicated but i think the way things are going as of now the most likely fixes would just involve making frost dmg better, which would leave it at best as a clone of fire using a different group of spells for slightly less dps. I think that would be pretty stupid, arcane is a different playstyle, and i think frost needs its own feel also.
In order to fix frost scaling, something rather drastic needs to be done to the tree as a whole. Improving crit scaling would, in turn, help haste and spellpower scaling.
However, remember that there are two parts to a critical strike: a chance to do more damage, and the amount of bonus damage. So far, no class has critical strike damage that scales with gear - perhaps that would be an interesting way to improve frost's crit scaling?
The other thing that perhaps could be an asset is finding a way for the Elemental to become more interesting, instead of an effectively passive damage buff.
I like the elemental thought, maybe they could make it so that freeze applies some short duration FoF type debuff on the boss that increases critical strike chance of frostbolt and ice lance (i.e. considered frozen)
I think getting to the point where an actual elemental shatter combo is used in pve would be good, its part of whta makes frost pvp fun because you are hitting a bunch of buttons all in close succession and if you do it well you are rewarded. (frostbolt --- Pet nova --- ice lance (as frostbolt cast ends) + ice lance if your range/haste are good enough for nothing to have landed yet)
the triple shatter thing is also pretty fun i think, requires decent gear, good timing and gives lots of big numbers
The third FoF charge can easily be made to work on pretty much any latency connection. The wording of the talent may have to include a new concept called "spell combo" to explain that the second charge can be a combo. I don't expect it to be changed.
I don't really think it can be changed. It is, after all, a network issue. I'm just saying that as far as Blizzard is concerned, it shouldn't exist; the spec should not be balanced around it. I'm glad you find it easy to make it work on pretty much any latency connection. I don't. Some nights it worked well for me, when my latency consistently hung in the 60-100ms range; others it didn't, when my neighbors were feeling frisky and their pr0n downloads or whatever they were doing were resulting in fluctuations more along the 50-300 area.
And it frankly doesn't strike me as reasonable for Blizzard to start writing tooltips that reflect out-of-game behavior. Balance around the in-game, intended mechanics, and ignore the latency issues as long as they're not gamebreaking. Ghost-charge Lances add, what, like, 1% DPS? Let people who know about them and can execute them consistently use them if they want, but balance the spec around the assumption that most people don't know about them and won't be using them.
Originally Posted by tgbrown7
Yes I see that you would like an improved playstyle and I think ideally that would be the cast, it just seems strange that people are attached to frost (maybe its some sort of lvl 60 or lvl 70 nostalgia?) when its currently a boring and terrible spec.
Oh, that's an easy answer: because WoW is a role-playing game. I as a player am not attached to Frost -- I like Frost, but it's not like I'll refuse to play anything else. I have both an Arcane and a Fire Mage. But to me and many others, spec is an important part of character identity and definition, and it's not reasonable to be required to retcon a character for the sake of viability. It's not that I'm attached to the Frost playstyle -- it's that I'm attached to my character, and my character is a Frost Mage.
Here on EJ, such concerns are not a particularly high priority for most people, but this is still the best resource even for people who enjoy the game as I do, because we do want to optimize performance -- we just want to do so within the limits imposed by the character concept.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
I don't really think it can be changed. It is, after all, a network issue.
It's a transaction concurrency issue on their database or something like that... When the counter is decremented, the new value doesn't propagate instantly, so a parallel thread processing the other spell still has the old value. The trick is not to fight it and fix it so that it doesn't exist, but so that everyone can pull it off.
So, instead of FoF falling off instantly on the second charge, put a timer on it after the second charge:
- First spell, consume a charge (just like now)
- Second spell, instead of removing FoF, set the time remaining to 0.8 seconds.
The only way to use the extra 0.8 seconds is to chain an instant cast after a cast time spell - just like you do now with the ghost charge. The difference is that now everyone can pull of FoF ghost shatters. It's a lot more like the frost nova shatters where the spell travel time decides when the nova breaks.
P.S. Here's the main reason I like frost: A lot of mages like the idea of a glass cannon that does a lot of damage, but dies easily. I want something a bit more resilient and slippery. I like the idea of being the last man standing in a wipe, ranged tanking stuff and kiting mobs that can one-shot you. I find counterspelling, polymorphing and deep freezing (alas, not in my current raid spec) stuff to protect the other raid members and help the raid survive the fight. I guess for me, frost is the "protection spec" for mages.
Or, like I said, just ignore it, rather than making it all weird and complicated. "This buff has three charges, the third of which must be used within a fraction of a second of the second" is not exactly an elegant design. I confess I find it baffling why people keep looking for convoluted methods of preserving the behavior of a bug that affects DPS by a miniscule amount, rather than fixing it (if it can be fixed) or ignoring it (if it can't be fixed but does not produce significant changes in performance).
Remember, one of Blizzard's primary design goals is KISS. They don't want talents designed so that they confuse new players. They want individual talents to behave in simple, clear ways, and for complex playstyles to emerge from the combinations of these talents and spells -- not from bizarre, complicated behavior within a single talent.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
"The fingers of frost buff lasts up to 15 seconds and will allow two spells, the second of which can be a combo, to consider the target frozen."
Or, if you want to buff PvP:
"The fingers of frost buff lasts up to 15 seconds and will allow your next two spell combos to consider their targets frozen."
The time window for pulling off the combo doesn't need to be in the tooltip. That's just an implementation detail that players may or may not figure out eventually.
The concept of a shatter combo is already in the game - it just isn't mentioned in any tooltips. Frostbolt+fire blast is something frost mages learn very early on and that has been in the game for years. Whatever the case, the current tooltip is already incorrect in that it says that FoF only affects frost spells.
A lot of game bugs (ignite munching for instance) are the result of concurrent processes on the server acting on the same data. They have to cut corners a bit here and there or the server performance will take a dive.
First, you complain that you don't like FoF ghost charges because they are not reliable for everyone. I think the obvious solution is to make them reliable for everyone. Removing FoF ghost charges would be a huge PvP nerf and they are actually quite fun to pull off - especially since the instant cast doesn't even have to hit the same target as the cast time spell. You can switch targets as soon as the spell starts casting and then hit the instant on the new target.
I guess I can kind of see how someone might consider themselves a frost mage as apposed to just a mage, its not me but i guess not out of the question either. I think the most important thing is to make sure if they do improve frost mechanics to be more fun that it actually be distinctly different from arc and fire in some way.
If i could choose to raid sometimes as frost on non progression type stuff and have it feel different and fun that would be a good thing, if its the same as fire i think that just is dumb. I think its good when blizzard makes each spec feel different (i.e. affliction dotting and destruction casting).
Yes I see that you would like an improved playstyle and I think ideally that would be the cast, it just seems strange that people are attached to frost (maybe its some sort of lvl 60 or lvl 70 nostalgia?) when its currently a boring and terrible spec.
I like Frost because I enjoy taking care of a pet in fights requiring movement (yes, I went there... I LIKE working to keep my pet alive). I enjoy bringing mana utility to a raid. I enjoy the decisions related to when to use my pet and cooldowns... decisions almost completely absent with fire (use combustion every time it's up, renew LB every time it's up, repeat...). I enjoy the survivability inherent to the spec.
I'm not a big fan of the binge-and-purge nature of Arcane (and, to be honest, I'm not good at it), or the boring 'spam your rotation, there are no strategic decisions to make because you only cast 3 spells the whole fight' nature of Fire and FFB.
Frost does not make any mechanical decisions on a shot-to-shot basis (Pyroblast, Living Bomb, Scorch), but it makes more decisions on a strategic basis (when to pop the pet & pet movement, icy veins). It's just a different playstyle, and I can understand why it's not to your liking. I also would enjoy a more varied shot rotation, but I don't actually hold the opinion that 'context based button mashing' is particularly interesting gameplay in and of itself. Fire spec's complete lack of interesting cooldowns is a heavy turnoff for me, which is why my second spec is FFB (at least I get to play with Icy Veins) rather than Fire.
While I doubt Blizzard will go there, I'd fully welcome making us into a pet spec, similar to Unholy DKs.
The concept of a shatter combo is already in the game - it just isn't mentioned in any tooltips. Frostbolt+fire blast is something frost mages learn very early on and that has been in the game for years. Whatever the case, the current tooltip is already incorrect in that it says that FoF only affects frost spells.
Spell flight time shatter combos can be inferred from the tooltip text, however. Spells cast on frozen targets get +50% crit. My spell is still in flight. The target is still frozen. Therefore, if I cast this spell now, it gets +50% crit. It's completely internal to the player-facing game mechanics.
The talent tooltip is correct; it reads "next two spells cast," no mention of Frost. The aura tooltip appears to be correct as well.
My objection is not merely that they are unreliable and non-obvious, although those are certainly part of my objection. I think it's also simply clumsy and inelegant to build a mechanic that involves split-second timing for miniscule payoff. I think it would be a much cleaner and more elegant solution, resulting in superior gameplay, to instead focus on introducing a spellcast into the DPS process that requires planning and decision-making to produce significant results; mixing a 1% DPS increase in based on intentionally duplicating the behavior of a latency bug strikes me as unproductive, and likely to muddy the waters of more important efforts to improve the playstyle and performance of the spec.
Perhaps those who are so fiercely defending this specific behavior just really like it for some reason I can't fathom myself. I can respect that. Many people don't understand why it matters to me that a character be able to raid as Frost, and I just have to tell them, "that's the kind of game I like to play," and there really isn't any better reason for it than that. I suppose we should just chalk this up to a difference of opinion and leave it at that: I dislike the mechanics of the bug and, while its illegitimacy is part of my complaint, legitimizing it wouldn't make it any more appealing to me; others seem to like the mechanics of the bug and would like to see it legitimized, and it may be that never the twain shall meet.
That being said, I think we can agree that whatever were to happen with it, it won't make much functional difference in improving the spec; significant changes must be made elsewhere.
I shall do my best to refrain from going into this particular subject again.
Originally Posted by MyrddinE
While I doubt Blizzard will go there, I'd fully welcome making us into a pet spec, similar to Unholy DKs.
I think at this point, so would I. I lobbied against it for a long time, but now that the thing isn't so damned fragile, I think managing a pet full-time could be a partial solution to Frost's playstyle problems. Some kind of tradeoff would need to be made in terms of making pet nova less available and dramatically extending its casting endurance, but that would easily be solvable with a change to the Water Elemental glyph.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
I would personally love Frost to be a pet spec too, especially since they are supposed to make pets scale with more stats than b4. That would make gearing a little more interesting,since you have to think about more than jus yourself.They could also give the elemental it's own tree like hunter pets get (Though that could be asking too much) so that everyone's elemental isn't exactly the same.
Just to add to what I said earlier, if the elemental was a permanent pet then it could account for say 30% of our dps so that when it's alive we do just about the same dps as a fire or arcane mage does. If it dies however watch out cause you will tank in dps. This would separate the good frost mages from the bad ones and make it so that it's not so face roll to play frost. Of course the would have to change the cast time on the summon from instant to about 4 or 5 seconds so that it punishes bad play and make it not so easy in the middle of a boss fight to go SWE oh it died, CS intant summon again.
Of course the would have to change the cast time on the summon from instant to about 4 or 5 seconds so that it punishes bad play and make it not so easy in the middle of a boss fight to go SWE oh it died, CS intant summon again.
A possibility would be to change the talent so that the pet summon spell summons the pet for double the time, but with the same cooldown... you then have a pet that you'll only get back when its cooldown is up, or burn your CS to get it back early. The downside of this is that your pet will never have raid buffs. But (and this is just a thought I've been kicking around)... why not make pets unbuffable? They're about to make pets scale with all owner stats, they might as well skip the whole 'pet gets double-buffed' problem by disallowing pet buffs completely. That prevents the WE from being gimped due to being frequently resummoned.
I'd also like to point out that Unholy's perma-pet has an instant-cast summon, and can be in excess of 20% of their damage. Just because it's useful doesn't mean it needs a cast time.
The downside of this is that your pet will never have raid buffs. But (and this is just a thought I've been kicking around)... why not make pets unbuffable? They're about to make pets scale with all owner stats, they might as well skip the whole 'pet gets double-buffed' problem by disallowing pet buffs completely.
This is possible but they would have to be very careful. Pets would have to scale greatly with owner stats. If they didn't and base damage wasn't high enough, pets would be too weak. If they didn't but base damage was high to compensate, then they would be too powerful in PvP (and 5 mans, and leveling, and soloing, etc..)
Overall, I'm resisting the idea to make suggestions here at EJ. We'll know soon enough when the 3.2 patch notes hit the PTR if frost mages are changing at all this iteration. We'll know what the long term vision is when the A of the Q&A for mages get posted. I will only say this:
I'm one of those Lhivera-type people. My mage is a frost mage, or I want him to be. I've got raids to lead so I'm Fire/TTW so I can top the meters. But I want my mage to be a frost mage. However, my list of problems with frost mages (low damage, raiding spec loses all frost flavor, horrible glyph designs, boring rotations, 15%+ spells cast are fire spells, broken replenishment, FoF-shatters based on bugs) is long enough that I know no simple change is going to fix it. If GC is going to really fix the problems then he needs to do something as severe as he did when redoing judgments and seals for paladins.
I'd also like to point out that Unholy's perma-pet has an instant-cast summon, and can be in excess of 20% of their damage. Just because it's useful doesn't mean it needs a cast time.[/quote]
That pet also requires a reagent or a corpse around to use which puts mild restrictions on it's summoning. As of now there is no restrictions on the WE summoning which is why it couldn't just be instant.
I think the pet as a more significant role in frost pve is a decent idea, one that would need a lot of thought with regards to balancing but could be great. Absolutely could work though. On the DK pet thing I think that is something that should be changed anyway, look at hunters and how much they sacrifice to get their pets back, when they are the epitome of a pet class (costs mana, long cast times, then requires mending etc). Comparing this with DKs probably shows us that DK pets are too easy to get back, and probably that hunters are too hard, unless BM.
I think the point about not making as many decisions as fire probably is too much of a simplification in comparison to frost though (though almost all dps in the game is at its core fairly simple). Things like using combustion anytime its up is something that will make you always be a good dps, but never great. Its knowing the timing of fights and utilizing everything to your advantage rather than just using CDs whenever they are up. Good example is mimiron P3, you need to make sure you have combustion up for a time when the head is down, and using that + spell trinkets + mana gem (making sure no living bombs are ticking anywhere if you have the glyph) is very similar to the type of decisions a frost mage makes about icy veins.
Again though, no dps is terribly complicated in general, its the same for all specs, use your CDs everytime you can and yuo will be good, rarely great.
I think frost being a pet class is an important point not only on potential for pve / pvp balance but also for distinct in terms of dps, which is why its a great option to explore. I am not sure I really want to be a pet class, but it would be interesting.
I think the freeze from an elemental would have to have its CD raised to maybe a 1m CD with this to prevent frost mage pvp from becoming too powerful. Then just have it be able to be cold snapped and I think that would make it fairly potent without being ridiculous.
Elemental mana issues would need to be addressed i think, but that wouldn't be too hard (maybe they just share mana gains with the mages mana gems / evocate?).
I am gonig to keep thinking about the elemental stuff, its intriguing but a fairly signifiant change if it became a permanent pet, so tough to think of all the ramifications.
3.2 notes posted; looks like no Frost changes with the possible exception of:
Pet scaling: If you're hit capped, your elemental's dps should be 17% higher, so that's a 1-2% buff
Replenishment: If the new mechanic operates on the 10 ticks/sec schedule, 3/3 Enduring Winter should be fine (but that's a significant "if").
ETA: I was poking through the SimCraft Mage functions looking for a way to set the Water Elemental's hit rate to 100%. Couldn't find it. I noticed, however, that the standard SimCraft output file produces a Waterbolt miss rate of only 2.8%, implying that the sim thinks the Water Elemental is gaining about 10% hit somehow. Anyone know what's up with that?
Last edited by Lhivera : 06/18/09 at 6:46 PM.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
Q: Do the developers still consider it an objective to improve Frost damage for PvE?
A: Yes. The challenge as always is to make sure we don’t over buff Frost in PvP just to make it viable in PvE. While it would be ideal for all specs to be viable in PvP and PvE, having different PvP and PvE specs at least keeps those specs alive rather than having one tree which is good at everything. We’d like to buff Frost through Ice Lance. Currently another Frostbolt is always better than an Ice Lance in PvE. We experimented with improving this through the glyph of Ice Lance, but it turns out the glyph would have to improve Ice Lance’s damage by x6 or something ridiculous like that.
No meaningful information other than that it's still somewhere on their list of priorities, but probably won't be coming in 3.2.
A: It isn’t in our best interest as designers to have Frost want very different stats than Fire. In a world where we already must add so many new items to the game with every new raid tier / Arena season, we just don’t want to dabble too much with “this piece is attractive to the Fire mage, but not the Frost mage.” We think the value of different stats has just crept too far apart for different specs of the same class. It’s just never going to feel right when one stat is worth double or more of the value of another stat. We’re making a big pass at all of the talent trees and item stats to try and get this a little closer for everyone. Ideally you might be comparing two pieces of cloth and have to decide whether the haste or crit is more valuable to you, and not just write off everything without crit as junk. So to answer the question succinctly, yes mages are being asked to focus too much on some stats.
The thing about "everything without crit as junk" just doesn't make sense though - even for fire specs. Fire mages like crit, but for fire/TTW, haste is still usually better per point and fire is also the only spec that can actually use all the hit in Ulduar gear. So the situation is that fire mages like all the stats (even spirit to some extent). Arcane and frost mages don't care about crit too much and go over the hit cap even while trying to avoid hit. For frost, items with hit/spirit or crit/spirit are usually absolute junk and actually sidegrades or downgrades from Naxx.
Also, if they seem to think that fire mages love crit a bit too much, why do the patch notes say that ignite now has a chance to restore mana? That once again buffs crit as a mana regen tool for fire.
The question part on items also claims that intellect is (more) useful to a frost mage.
There are several spots in the Q&A that really make me wonder if they understand how mages work. Makes me sad.
06/17/09, 4:38 PM
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