Some good suggestions, Lhivera. Would finally be a step closer to the "PVE Ice Lances' many would love to see. Casting 5 ice lances would seem a little silly, however (Assuming it stacks 5 times like now). A glyph tie-in similar to scorch would fix that. I honestly think something like this (a re-working of what can deliver the +10% debuff) is on the drawing boards for 3.1 . The issue at the moment surrounding Arcane and said debuff is a sore thumb standout on their model for WOTLK design currently.
I hope you're right.
Note though that casting 5 Ice Lances wouldn't necessarily be required, unless you're the only Mage present. Instead of "Improved Scorch" and "Winter's Chill" perhaps we have:
- Spell Vulnerability: Increases the critical strike chance of all spells against the target by 1%; stacks up to 10 times; lasts 20 seconds.
- Scorch: Does X-Y Fire damage and applies two stacks of Spell Vulnerability to the target.
- Ice Lance: Does X-Y Frost damage, triple vs frozen targets, and applies two stacks of Spell Vulnerability to the target.
- Arcane Missiles: Fires five volleys of Arcane Missiles at the target, each dealing X-Y Arcane damage and applying one stack of Spell Vulnerability to the target.
A single cast of any of these spells refreshes the whole stack. If you had an Arcane Mage and a Frost Mage in the raid, one cast of Arcane Missiles and three casts of Ice Lance would produce a full stack. Shorter duration than Improved Scorch (since now, other Mages can help refresh it), longer duration than Winter's Chill (since now, you need to switch to a lower-DPS cast to refresh).
It seems like it should work...anyone see a reason why it shouldn't?
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 think the AOE winter's chill debuff would be missed on trash clears. That's a big nerf on raid AOE DPS, although I guess very few raids bring frost mages right now... PvP players would also be somewhat unhappy, because winter's chill is a nice trash debuff and builds up on all frost spells. Other than those issues, it's a nice enough idea.
I think the AOE winter's chill debuff would be missed on trash clears. That's a big nerf on raid AOE DPS, although I guess very few raids bring frost mages right now... PvP players would also be somewhat unhappy, because winter's chill is a nice trash debuff and builds up on all frost spells. Other than those issues, it's a nice enough idea.
The AOE issue is one I hadn't thought of. It'd give Frost Mages a bit more of an advantage on AOE, since FoF is a significantly higher contributer to their crit rate than WC. I think personally that the benefits would outweigh this cost.
As for WC being used as a trash debuff, hasn't Blizzard been talking about trash debuffs being a concern of theirs in PvP? Eliminating this one might be considered a plus from their point of view.
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.
It'd be nice to have a sticky that is updated with the top bugs/concerns/questionable mechanics all in one place (Concern: Arcane mages can't get the +crit buff without severely gimping their spec, Bug/Oversight: Is AB 's debuff intended to be dispellable? Is the +15% Arcane Blast glyph intended to stack and be that powerful? Questionable Mechanics: Is the Arcane Shatter combo considered unintended by Blizzard and likely to be fixed? etc)
Something that - if you were a Blizz developer - you could look at and get an instant, thorough snapshot of all concerns relevant to mages. The crit debuff category concern VS arcanes inability to provide it (without silly gimping) would definetely be near the top of the list.
Kind of like Manly's signature, but fleshed out and in a sticky instead.
I know mages themselves might not care too much, but it would be really nice if the 10% spell crit debuff was given to another class as well. Having any buff be a class exclusive at this point is more of an annoyance than anything. (This applies to things like paladin blessings as well)
- Spell Vulnerability: Increases the critical strike chance of all spells against the target by 1%; stacks up to 10 times; lasts 20 seconds.
- Scorch: Does X-Y Fire damage and applies two stacks of Spell Vulnerability to the target.
- Ice Lance: Does X-Y Frost damage, triple vs frozen targets, and applies two stacks of Spell Vulnerability to the target.
- Arcane Missiles: Fires five volleys of Arcane Missiles at the target, each dealing X-Y Arcane damage and applying one stack of Spell Vulnerability to the target.
Lhivera, usually I like your suggestions but this time, I vehemently disagree with your suggestion on how to apply the vulnerability.
I see no logical reason mages should have to choose lower DPS spells. This debuff should work like winter's chill or shadow weaving. It's neither interesting or fun to scorch to apply a vulnerability, and it never has been. It doesn't demonstrate skill, it just demonstrates a willingness to put up with an annoying design.
Consider the recent lag in Naxxramas. Mages regularly lose scorch debuffs because lag delays the scorch spell for a few seconds. Even if that doesn't happen, it's possible to lose the stack because it appears there is now some finite short amount of time after the scorch lands before the debuff is applied/refreshes. You're really scorching earlier than you should have to for maximum DPS, and of course scorching early is always a DPS loss. There's no fun in having to deal with that kind of behavior.
Granted, hitting one spell over and over isn't particularly exciting. However, the developers have done a good job of mixing things up with procs in both the arcane and fire trees. Frost, I grant you, is an ongoing debacle right now and I would love to see it properly addressed, but you more than most are acutely aware of its shortcomings.
If you look at glyphs and talents for other classes, they are at least open to the idea of moving away from needing to maintain debuffs/etc at the cost of DPS output. Warlocks have such a talent in everlasting aflliction. Mages got a break with the improved scorch glyph. The developers seem to recognize that nobody wants to sit there scorching while the melee is pumping out 8K crits and simultaneously applying debuffs from the moment the fight starts. Take rogues as an example there; the mechanic is passive - apply poison, fight.
While I very much like the spell vulnerability effect and have been wishing since beta they were going to rework it that way, I see no reason it should not simply be applied and refreshed by casting spells from that tree. I can't think of any inherent value, interest, or enjoyment being brought to the mage class by limiting it only to a low-DPS spell, and given the way winter's chill works today, it is clearly not a technical limitation.
Lhivera, usually I like your suggestions but this time, I vehemently disagree with your suggestion on how to apply the vulnerability.
I see no logical reason mages should have to choose lower DPS spells.
Lhivera was killing 2 birds with 1 stone. He wants to fix the monotonous deep-frost playstyle as well as fixing 'making 10% crit debuff applied by all specs (without requiring to invest talent points, although personally I'd probably change focus magic to do just that). You have to realize his intent isn't to tank further frost dps -- but rather to point out that fixing a spec dps issues has about a million possible solution, and that it is rather pointless to start enumerating them all. Properly nerfing a spec though is much more touchy and hard to do.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Yes, its the old scorch mechanic applied more broadly, and with an even shorter refresh time. I agreed with Vontre's sentiments - it was about as exciting as AIDs and I'd be happy never to see it again. Merging the improved scorch & winter's chill debuffs would be a good idea, but not at the cost of stacking 5 times and maintaining every 20 seconds or stacking 5 times again. *shudder*
Yes, its the old scorch mechanic applied more broadly, and with an even shorter refresh time. I agreed with Vontre's sentiments - it was about as exciting as AIDs and I'd be happy never to see it again. Merging the improved scorch & winter's chill debuffs would be a good idea, but not at the cost of stacking 5 times and maintaining every 20 seconds or stacking 5 times again. *shudder*
While the debuff duration would be shorter, the responsibility for maintaining it would be shared around. Rather than scorching five times, maybe you scorch once and the Frost Mage tosses two Ice Lances and the Arcane Mage tosses a missiles cast. If an Arcane Mage is present, he'll generally keep it up automatically as part of his rotation; in a highly mobile fight, a Frost Mage would probably take primary responsibility since his maintenance cast can be thrown on the move. One of the results is that Mages can demonstrate a little teamwork by adapting their strategy for maintaining the buff based on which specs are present and what kind of fight it is.
I'm not married to the 20 second duration, or anything, I just figured something in-between the current WC and IS durations would make sense.
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.
Lhivera was killing 2 birds with 1 stone. He wants to fix the monotonous deep-frost playstyle as well as fixing 'making 10% crit debuff applied by all specs (without requiring to invest talent points, although personally I'd probably change focus magic to do just that). You have to realize his intent isn't to tank further frost dps -- but rather to point out that fixing a spec dps issues has about a million possible solution, and that it is rather pointless to start enumerating them all. Properly nerfing a spec though is much more touchy and hard to do.
True, but along the same lines, Lhivera's earned a high level of respect here and on other forums, and his suggestions do have a tendancy to carry some weight as a result. I'm simply very much against the idea of having to cast lower-DPS spells as some sort of means to apply a debuff in this case.
Let me put it this way. In my idealized view, mages should cast scorch because they want to cast scorch, not because they have to cast scorch. The former case is the time when you are finishing off a mob, getting a last spell out before you get picked up in Malygos's Vortex, etc. The latter case falls into the category of a chore, like taking out the garbage, and indeed, how many times is it that a specific mage is assigned to scorch on a given fight so the others can do higher DPS?
I'd rather see the debuff be something that is an effect on spells that people want to be casting for DPS rotations, not ones that would otherwise be rarely, if ever, used, because to me, that feel really kludgy. I might be in the minority here, and perhaps the majority of mages actually really like the "have to keep scorch up" mechanic and want to see it expanded to other schools.
True, but along the same lines, Lhivera's earned a high level of respect here and on other forums, and his suggestions do have a tendancy to carry some weight as a result. I'm simply very much against the idea of having to cast lower-DPS spells as some sort of means to apply a debuff in this case.
I do disagree somewhat, but of course my primary spec is the one that's boring because it has no rotation. The thing is, I don't really think of it as being forced to cast a lower-DPS spell (I know I referred to it that way, but once I'm playing it, it doesn't feel that way). Instead, it feels like a component in a higher-DPS rotation. Scorch isn't a DPS loss, because when you cast it, your average DPS is increasing, not decreasing.
That said, I'm mindful of the fact that some people dislike it, which is why I was careful to ensure that it actually doesn't change the Fire playstyle at all. If a Fire Mage is the only one present, his casting rotation is untouched by this change. Indeed, the glyph can still have the same effect, by causing a Scorch to apply six debuffs instaed of two.
So: Fire, neutral change (except now can work with other Mages to spread the load around). Arcane, can now provide the buff. Frost, now has a reason to cast another spell -- and without making Ice Lance overpowered in PvP. I recognize that this doesn't remove the need for Fire to cast Scorch, which you would prefer, but it doesn't make the situation any more unpleasant for you, either, and it should make it a bit less so when there are Mages of other specs present.
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 like Lhivera's idea but there are a few more things to be taken into consideration especially concerning PvP.
- PvP is currently very bursty and giving arcane mages another 10% crit would not help the situation a lot I guess.
- Also having another debuff (10 times stackable!) for mages makes defensive dispell even harder.
Allowing mages regardless of their spec to support their raids passively rather than making them adjusting their rotations would be nice, but even though many probably don't give damn about it, PvP still needs to be kept in mind as part of the game.
Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
- Arnold H. Glasow
I like Lhivera's idea but there are a few more things to be taken into consideration especially concerning PvP.
- PvP is currently very bursty and giving arcane mages another 10% crit would not help the situation a lot I guess.
- Also having another debuff (10 times stackable!) for mages makes defensive dispell even harder.
I would expect that the only way this could work, keeping PvP in mind, is for the entire stack to be dispellable in a single cast, rather than one dispel per application. As I mentioned above, Blizzard has talked about wanting to do something about "junk" debuffs in PvP, and this would be a way to eliminate one of them by reducing the required dispels from 5 to 1.
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.
This is sort of merging with the frost raiding topic now...
If I specced TTW for raiding, it would almost certainly mean dropping Brain Freeze completely even though the amount of mobility it gives to frost is nice. The mana efficiency wouldn't be needed. So the TTW build would be 100% pure frostbolt spam and nothing else.
I've played frost for 3 years now and this is the first time I'm getting really depressed about the PvE side of things... It seems TTW was changed in order to fix frost in PvE, but all it does is take out almost all the frost flavor and a lot of the PvP viability. The message seems clear: if you want to do PvP frost, you'll do totally unacceptable DPS in PvE (the glyph alone is proof of that intent). If you want a spec that works for both PvP and PvE, you go arcane... That's just not me.
Actually, with naxx 25 lag and game smoothness issues, I don't think raiding is all that fun either anymore. Classes with auto attack out-DPS casters because casters are much more reliant on good timing. If all I can do is spam a button and hope something comes out, there's no room for spell rotation finesse or even optimizing the use of brain freeze procs (I've started ignoring them during heroism/IV, because more and more often I end up with the fireballs not coming out at all or I end up with two of them, the latter being a normal cast time fireball).
This is sort of merging with the frost raiding topic now...
If I specced TTW for raiding, it would almost certainly mean dropping Brain Freeze completely even though the amount of mobility it gives to frost is nice. The mana efficiency wouldn't be needed. So the TTW build would be 100% pure frostbolt spam and nothing else.
I've played frost for 3 years now and this is the first time I'm getting really depressed about the PvE side of things... It seems TTW was changed in order to fix frost in PvE, but all it does is take out almost all the frost flavor and a lot of the PvP viability. The message seems clear: if you want to do PvP frost, you'll do totally unacceptable DPS in PvE (the glyph alone is proof of that intent). If you want a spec that works for both PvP and PvE, you go arcane... That's just not me.
Actually, with naxx 25 lag and game smoothness issues, I don't think raiding is all that fun either anymore. Classes with auto attack out-DPS casters because casters are much more reliant on good timing. If all I can do is spam a button and hope something comes out, there's no room for spell rotation finesse or even optimizing the use of brain freeze procs (I've started ignoring them during heroism/IV, because more and more often I end up with the fireballs not coming out at all or I end up with two of them, the latter being a normal cast time fireball).
Not true really, since 3.08 i went arcane and have a frost mage with me in raids, he benefits quite a lot from my Focus Magic, and his winters chill benefits me. I have been topping the damage meters recently and the closest auto attack classes (hunters, DK, Rogues, Warriors) are a good 100-200 dps behind me and the frost mage is still competetive making up for a lack of dps on single targets with insane dps on trash mobs. I will sign up to WWS tonight before naxx and hopefully post a report tomorrow for you to see.
Lag is and will be server-specific. Last week, I think we lost the tank on Gluth at some point because of a lag spike. The healers also had extreme difficulty in timing the heals so they matched the 3 second healing window on Loatheb, so although no one died and we one-shotted Loatheb, it was a very close thing and the difficulty was entirely due to lag.
Also last week, our Noth kill took something like 10-11 minutes because of extreme lag. On Maexxna, you sometimes you didn't see the web-wrapped players on the walls than just a few seconds before everyone got wrapped. On Thaddius, the polarity changes (debuffs) might only become visible after a few seconds, at which time some of the players have already died.
On Gluth this week, I cast a frost nova and then had to run around for about 3 seconds before anything happened. You couldn't stay still, because the ghouls would kill you, but you couldn't really aim where the nova would go, because you didn't know when it would go off. Once Gluth was dead, the ghouls first despawned and then suddenly a few more of them spawned, each one with a million hit points (annoying, but easy enough).
10 man is usually fine and I do pretty well on DPS there. 25 man is occasionally nearly unplayable.
Lag is of course not an intended part of the game, so it shouldn't affect theorycrafting. It is however a very real part of my game experience right now.
Lag is of course not an intended part of the game, so it shouldn't affect theorycrafting. It is however a very real part of my game experience right now.
It been very depressing for the last month raiding 25 man, allthis theroy craft has helped me greatly.
Just wish I could see the proof in the pudding for myself.
On Gluth this week, I cast a frost nova and then had to run around for about 3 seconds before anything happened. You couldn't stay still, because the ghouls would kill you, but you couldn't really aim where the nova would go, because you didn't know when it would go off. Once Gluth was dead, the ghouls first despawned and then suddenly a few more of them spawned, each one with a million hit points (annoying, but easy enough).
Actually, I think gluth might be bugged. This exact same thing happened to us, and our other raiding group.
I searched the forum but couldn't find any posts regarding this.
As of now, [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] gains no charges from Blizzard. And I don't only mean Blizzard waves, I mean even the actual, initial casting of Blizzard won't give any charge.
I reported the blizzard/trinket bug here (in another thread), on the Subcreation mage forum and the EU mage forum.
Wether Blizzard knows about it or not - I don't know. If there will be a PTR for 3.0.9, I'll copy over and report it. Blizzard EU forums lack a generic "bug report" section.
I suspect this bug might be hot-fixable, since the charges are generated by a server-side script.
There are other, possibly related, bugs in the spell as well, although I think the trinket bug is primarily due to a side effect of an intentional nerf on how the trinket procs. Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze will only proc on targets that are vulnerable to frostbite, so as soon as you are dealing with "higher end" trash, you lose a lot of your crit on Blizzard and you don't have the "finishing move" brain freezes either.
This may look like a boring solution, but they could make scorch back to fire only and winter's chill back to frost only. If that causes raids to not consider mages as raid buffing, they should make AI a little bit better and/or make mages do enough DPS to be worth their slot but not too much so you won't want to stack them over classes that bring other buffs. At least this is the most simple solution that doesn't force an inferior spec for providing a buff, as well as forcing respecs whenever that buff is not present - blizz seems to be doing away with that (for reference, look at the availability of replenishment, 5% crit buff, 3% crit debuff) which is a good thing. After that they just need to bring arcane on par with other specs, meaning do similar AOE (or more AOE in point blank and less in range), do a little more dps on short/gimmick fights and little less dps on long fights, and on both be similar to fire.
Fixing all the bugs should be a given, and then balance around that. Anyone remembers how in Diablo 2 barbarians got totally nerfed to balance them around 100% crit bug, and then when the bug was fixed they became near-useless? Balancing around a bug is never a good idea, it's kind of a waste of effort. After bugs are fixed balanced should be done around that...
The things I think really suck (that is: aren't fun and don't make sense) with the current situation:
1. One mage has to lose significant DPS in order to provide a much more significant DPS increase to the rest of the raid, which results in a lot of respeccing.
2. Arcane is so good that even arcane with scorch is more DPS than fire. It's even better on extremely short fights, and doesn't suffer enough on longer fights, as it wins on very long fights too.
3. Having optimal DPS cycles rely on bugs is very tedious. I find the current arcane bug at least as tedious as playing with /stopcasting before that got fixed. Heck even if they fix the bug, channeling spells still suffer from the fact that they don't benefit from the "new" casting system, making them as annoying as all spells were back in the /stopcasting age.
4. I still need to check with optimal gear, but with my alt mage's bad gear, frost is about 400 DPS behind fireball (not to mention arcane), making fire a 13-14% DPS increase over frost. Frost should really not be that much behind, especially after giving up its snares and considering bosses are unfreezeable and frost's survivability costs even more DPS. You can't even take frostbite/bliz in a spec that maximizes frost DPS. Considering all the cool frost advantages don't really apply in a raid, it should have almost as much single target DPS and slightly more DPM compared to fire, which would then make it a spec that one would actually consider in a raid.
This may look like a boring solution, but they could make scorch back to fire only and winter's chill back to frost only.
I think they actually made exactly the right move in eliminating the vast majority of school-specific debuffs. If you reverted to Fire- and Frost-specific versions of these debuffs, you not only have to rebalance Mages, you have to rebalance every other class that deals Magic damage. The game's already a massive balancing nightmare after the Great Buff/Debuff Consolidation of 2008; returning to even part of the former system would throw a major wrench into the works.
I thought some and talked to a couple people last night and tried to refine the idea I discussed over the last couple pages; I've added the result into my suggestions page, and here is the consolidated result specific to the crit debuff suggestion. Comments/suggestions welcome, either here or via email (contact link is on my page).
The Crit Debuff Problem
Problems:
Optimal Arcane build cannot provide crit debuff. If it does comparable DPS to other specs, the lack of the debuff makes it an undesirable spec; if it does significantly higher DPS than other specs, it becomes the only desirable spec for all Mages after the first.
Improved Scorch and Winter's Chill interact in an awkward manner; if one is applied, the other cannot be applied at all, even if it would stack more quickly; when one falls off the target, one needs to be rebuilt from scratch rather than the other taking over.
Suggested changes:
Remove the Winter's Chill and Improved Scorch talents.
Replace old debuffs with Spell Vulnerability: Increases the critical strike chance of all spells against the target by 1%; stacks up to 10 times; lasts 20 seconds; dispel removes the entire stack.
Adjustment to Scorch spell: Scorch the enemy for 376 to 444 Fire damage, afflicting the target with two applications of Spell Vulnerability.
Adjustment to Ice Lance spell: Deals 221 to 255 Frost damage and afflicts the target with two applications of Spell Vulnerability. Causes triple damage against Frozen targets.
Adjustment to Arcane Missiles spell: Launches Arcane Missiles at the enemy, causing 360 Arcane damage and inflicting the target with one application of Spell Vulnerability every 1 sec for 5 sec.
Adjustment to Glyph of Improved Scorch: Your Scorch spell now generates 5 applications of the Spell Vulnerability effect each time Scorch is cast.
Time to stack debuff (assuming 0 haste):
Arcane Missiles: 10 seconds (2 casts), no mobility, possibility of half-time casts on MBAM procs.
Ice Lance: 7.5 seconds (5 casts), mobility.
Scorch: 7.5 seconds (5 casts), no mobility.
Scorch (glyphed): 3.0 seconds (2 casts), no mobility.
Bear in mind that multiple Mages can pool their efforts and reduce the stacking time by using any of these spells in combination.
Rationale:
Every spec now brings the debuff, and lack of the debuff is no longer a balancing concern for Arcane.
The debuff is standardized across all three spells, so that multiple mages of differing specs can contribute to and maintain the same stack.
As has always been the case for Fire Mages, Frost and Arcane Mages must use a relatively low DPS spell to stack/refresh the buff, thus encouraging the use of these spells in rotation.
Frost Mages now have a reason to cast Ice Lance on Fingers of Frost charges, because doing so maintains the debuff at a much smaller DPS penalty on the cast. A bit more interactivity is achieved.
A bit of bloat (going by Blizzard's definition of having nearly no points for non-DPS talents after maxing DPS; see below) is removed from several specs.
Possible downsides:
Loss of 5-stack Winter's Chill "junk debuff" dispel protection in PvP. However, as Blizzard has talked about "junk debuffs" being a concern in PvP anyway, this may not be a negative point at all.
Loss of Winter's Chill debuff applied to AOE targets by Blizzard.
Last edited by Lhivera : 01/23/09 at 1:43 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.
01/22/09, 5:42 PM
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