Upcoming Mage Changes in 3.1 - Page 52

Krazen · 03/16/09, 6:57 PM

Originally Posted by Chenz

Apart from the [Mage] Spirit "more useful" - still planned? thread there's also discussions about the mana system in MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Did you see this?, where the OP is trying to explain to Ghostcrawler why energy equals casting time, and the overall drawbacks with mana in comparison to other resource systems in game. It seems like a lot of mages reacted on the "god mode" comment by GC.

The thing is, every time mana and spirit is brought up, Ghostcrawler answers with something completely irrelevant, or just tells us mage dps wont be buffed. It seems like they have no idea of what to do, and at this point in the development cycle of 3.1, I get the feeling that nothing while change at all. Quite possibly, we will get some kind of spirit-to-dps stat conversion, but that feels like yet another bandaid fix. Oh yes, GC has changed his mind about that, see MMO-Champion BlueTracker - [Mage] Spirit "more useful" - still planned?

As a sidenote, I went oom today on Kel'Thuzad normal and had to wand due to lack of Replenishment and JoW. Great fun.

I don't see why that's necessarily a 'band-aid', a spirit to dps ratio is exactly what we got. Personally I don't know why Molten Armor doesn't give you 1 crit per 100 spirit, or something like that, instead of a static 3%.

Chenz · 03/16/09, 7:08 PM

Originally Posted by Krazen

I don't see why that's necessarily a 'band-aid', a spirit to dps ratio is exactly what we got. Personally I don't know why Molten Armor doesn't give you 1 crit per 100 spirit, or something like that, instead of a static 3%.

Blizzard has stated that they would like improve mages mana system. A change to spirit could be a way to get closer to that goal. A stat conversion doesn't make spirit more interesting, it only makes (as it has been expressed here on EJ) the bitter pill easier to swallow.

Zaldinar · 03/16/09, 7:14 PM

Originally Posted by Dragonrhonin

I believe I read somewhere that Ignite was reduced by resilience along with the original crit being reduced, and that this caused a double dipping effect on overall fire damage. Have you tried beating on someone in pvp gear?

That was fixed back way pre-WotLK after we spent a few weeks talking about how it was a double penalty, it was done quietly and nobody really payed attention to it due to frosts total domination of the Arena. Its really easy to show on live that it doesn't currently have this effect, and that on the PTR it also still does not.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...g?t=1237245153

1999 crit, two ticks of ignite, one for 399, one for 400, exactly as expected on a target with 412 resil if resil does not interact with the ignite damage itself.

Arantes · 03/16/09, 7:40 PM

The whole issue of changes post 3.0 and trying to consolidate raid buffs should probably have been dealt with by having part of the design team set aside to rebuild caster talent trees completely from scratch.

Trying to consolidate buffs when some are trained spells, some are early tier talents, some late and some require 3 points for x percent while others require 5 points for the same x percent effect can only result in a process with many more in between stages where classes feel unequal and the consolidation of buffs isn't as effective as it should be.

Having a team working on a generic caster tree (or maybe multiple generic caster trees) would at least address the raid buff consolidation problem and probably give them a better chance at keeping scaling in line. The obvious downside would be the potential that every caster class would feel the same - but this would have to be addressed separately when tying the work of this project together with the current state of the game.

As it is every time they adjust one class they're either going to fall short because the other class has the same effect untalented or at a more accessible talent cost or they're going to overshoot and make the previous buff class no longer want to use the buff.

The 3 biggest DPS caster buffs are 3% hit, 13% dmg and 10% (now 5%) crit. It's entirely possible to divide these between all the DPS caster classes

Shadow Priest
Balance Druid
Elemental Shaman
Lock x3
Mage x3

and still make them feel unique. Blizzard is handicapping themselves by starting from the previous point - unique raid buffs - and trying to reach the new objective - consolidated utility - by not taking a starting fresh approach to talent trees.

Taking this approach would also allow them to better itemize gear and to find a unique but similar use for spirit for each of these casters.

• ash2ash · 03/17/09, 1:54 AM

Originally Posted by Arantes

The whole issue of changes post 3.0 and trying to consolidate raid buffs should probably have been dealt with by having part of the design team set aside to rebuild caster talent trees completely from scratch.

Trying to consolidate buffs when some are trained spells, some are early tier talents, some late and some require 3 points for x percent while others require 5 points for the same x percent effect can only result in a process with many more in between stages where classes feel unequal and the consolidation of buffs isn't as effective as it should be.

Having a team working on a generic caster tree (or maybe multiple generic caster trees) would at least address the raid buff consolidation problem and probably give them a better chance at keeping scaling in line. The obvious downside would be the potential that every caster class would feel the same - but this would have to be addressed separately when tying the work of this project together with the current state of the game.

As it is every time they adjust one class they're either going to fall short because the other class has the same effect untalented or at a more accessible talent cost or they're going to overshoot and make the previous buff class no longer want to use the buff.

The 3 biggest DPS caster buffs are 3% hit, 13% dmg and 10% (now 5%) crit. It's entirely possible to divide these between all the DPS caster classes

Shadow Priest
Balance Druid
Elemental Shaman
Lock x3
Mage x3

and still make them feel unique. Blizzard is handicapping themselves by starting from the previous point - unique raid buffs - and trying to reach the new objective - consolidated utility - by not taking a starting fresh approach to talent trees.

Taking this approach would also allow them to better itemize gear and to find a unique but similar use for spirit for each of these casters.

Totem of wrath is nothing to sneeze at either. And bloodlust depending on the fight length. Elemental shamans are pretty much required to maximize caster dps atm, and to maximize raid dps you need a shaman of any spec for bloodlust.

Arantes · 03/17/09, 2:45 AM

Originally Posted by ash2ash

Totem of wrath is nothing to sneeze at either. And bloodlust depending on the fight length. Elemental shamans are pretty much required to maximize caster dps atm, and to maximize raid dps you need a shaman of any spec for bloodlust.

Oh I agree - but like I said, starting from the current point and trying to consolidate things one step at a time is seriously handicapping their own efforts. Were they to set aside some amount of design team hours to work on this approach from the ground up they'd have an easier time I think and they would also be able to come up with justifications that make much more sense then "well we don't want to give other classes Bloodlust".

Zerstorung · 03/17/09, 3:08 AM

Hello all, finally made an account here at EJ. This is a long thread and I've skimmed through most of it so I apologize if my question has been asked before.

Let's assume that a Warlock or even another mage (not you) is maintaining the 5% crit buff. In this case, could you personally spec 20/51 Arc/Fire, putting 2 extra points into Arcane Meditation? How good is the regen with this spec, and is it enough to make a difference?

I was thinking of this spec for Ulduar, basically Torment Fire, take 3 points out of Scorch and pick up Blast Wave, then 2 points for Arcane Med for additional mana regen on top of Pyromaniac.

TigaFin · 03/17/09, 4:20 AM

I think that's an entirely valid spec and I'm sure dual spec will allow a lot of dedicated raiding fire mages to use those two specs so that one is a more mana-efficient raiding build without improved scorch and the other has improved scorch. If the raid doesn't have anyone else who can do the crit debuff, the mage will probably have to use the scorch build.

My guess would be that this isn't what Blizzard intended dual spec for. I'm surprised that they haven't added a selfish benefit to improved scorch and winter's chill. As long as you only need one person with the talents per raid and have no benefit for having more than one, dual speccing is going to be used to min-max with those talent.

BeeLz · 03/17/09, 7:41 AM

Originally Posted by Anobix

I don't know what else they can do to make it worthwhile. I mean if they can even give a fraction of a point of crit or haste (as they have said to not expect free spellpower) it can be .1 dps for each point of spirit, which wouldn't make it wothwhile to gem for but at least some side benefit to receiving it)

That wouldn't fix the problem at all. You would still want to avoid spirit as much as possible in that case. Spirit has to give a real benefit, preferably active regen so you would actually want some but wouldn't want more than needed.

Dahkeus · 03/17/09, 7:47 AM

It really surprises me that so many people are so ambivalent on how to get spirit to be a stat that is wanted on gear, but not a high priority stat. It seems like if you wanted to find out how to do this, all you need to do is look at Arcane, particularly in the 40/0/21 build of BC.

As many have already pointed out, there are a lot of problems with simply smashing in a dps bonus to spirit. However, I always thought the model of arcane as a spec that can adjust its rotation to burn or conserve mana was something that not only made mana management active beyond cooldown management and more dynamic so that you aren't simply spamming one static, unchanging rotation for the whole raid.

While there are, of course some downsides to this mechanic, such as being dry on long fights without the right buffs, this can be countered to some degree. This has been shown by the differences between BC arcane and Wrath arcane. In BC, you could burn mana REALLY fast with a pure AB spam if you wanted, just as you could pretty much regen mana by spamming frostbolt. In Wrath, the frostbolt spam would be too low of dps to be worth using as a regen and a pure AB spam doesn't mana burn as effectively because you will still want to use your MB procs to increase dps.

Of course, the real problem with spirit seems to be with fire, frost, and ffb. I can't say exactly how, but it like if they want to make spirit a worthwhile stat, then they should allow a decent amount of in combat regen from spirit and then give the trees a way to turn extra mana into more dps.

macbeet · 03/17/09, 8:41 AM

A problem with spirit is, that it cannot scale properly. While it is possible to put10% more spellpower on items for the next tier, you cannot do that with spirit. If you were, the fights in the next tier had to be more mana consuming (longer) or the mage would become completely independent of mana due to excess spirit.
Since there is a upper limit to the spirit on your gear for this reason, a talent that gives you proportionally to spirit will be very good on the first tiers, and bad on the last ones. (This argument is true for the old 25% Mind Mastery and 40.0.21 builds in BC. They were very good at the beginning, because BC practically doubled your int in blues, but after that increased very little).
Ergo: we want a spirit benefit, that scales with the rest of your gear, but not with spirit... tricky.

Anobix · 03/17/09, 8:55 AM

Originally Posted by BeeLz

That wouldn't fix the problem at all. You would still want to avoid spirit as much as possible in that case. Spirit has to give a real benefit, preferably active regen so you would actually want some but wouldn't want more than needed.

I agree and disagree with that. An active regen is great, if you are running low on mana - which I haven't seen any of my raiding mages (other than myself, as I am arcane, they are either arcane/fire or frostfire) to run low on mana during any of our fights, I almost never see them need to evocate.

I basically took the 'bitter pill to swallow' route - as from what I can tell, the majority of the gear for ulduar is itemized with at least some spirit on it - and with my route we would help gain at least SOME true dps benefit out of spirit, it would at least give a positive stat to say "hey, that has 50 spirit on it, I get 10crit rating out of that" or at least something to make us take the piece instead of praying for the single pieces to drop that lack spirit.

I apologize if that was a round-about way of saying that an active regen (which spirit gives to most specs whether they are arcane meditation specced or pyromaniac, as those will give regen while casting based on spirit [I would assume, don't know where else those numbers would come from]). The point that I am trying to make, is that spirit-based regen for us is limited to pretty much only arcane mages and mana-drain encounters for the other specs as it stands right now. If anyone wants to jump in that has some more Ulduar raiding experiences with the boss fight lengths and the encounter information I would be happy to turn down my point.

Light4 · 03/17/09, 9:13 AM

With the tons of spirit coming in Ulduar gear, how reasonable is it for arcane to run around with mage armor (with a possible changed glyph) and go for ABspamMBAM?

Lileith · 03/17/09, 9:43 AM

The thing is, everyone is aiming for BIS, and unless we get a massive % of spirit converted to haste or crit, BIS will always be the item without spirit. If they want to balance our dps with spirit gear in mind they have to put spirit on every single piece of gear. That way it won't matter how much we get from spirit 10% 20% ect...because it will be there and our dps will be balanced with that gearset in mind.

Intellect is on every single piece of gear, (with only 1 viable crafted exeption), but if there was lvl213 caster items without intellect chance are that they would be the best in slot items dps wise. Remember how good was the Solarian Wand or even Belt of blasting during BC simply due to the fact they had 0 stats. Intellect beeing on every piece of gear we aren't really wondering if intellect provide enough dps increase because it's just here.

They want more people to share the same items, but I still don't see the point of making cloth without spirit. They become the BIS for most classes (Spriests, Warlocks, Mages even Moonkin or Elem Shaman who are lacking hit) leading to a much harder time gearing up and frustration seeing other classes geared in a couple runs while cloth casters still struggle after 15+ runs because 3 out of 4 items has spirit.

Now If blizzard update every piece of cloth(leather?) gear to include spirit (even those from Naxxramas) and rebalance casters dps to make sure they are still where they should be, via talents , or a spirit scaling type of ability. The problem would be solved.

Chance are that with that amount of spirit (which would be very significant ~600+) some of the mana issues mage currently face will be gone as well.

macbeet · 03/17/09, 10:10 AM

Originally Posted by Lileith

The thing is, everyone is aiming for BIS, and unless we get a massive % of spirit converted to haste or crit, BIS will always be the item without spirit. If they want to balance our dps with spirit gear in mind they have to put spirit on every single piece of gear. That way it won't matter how much we get from spirit 10% 20% ect...because it will be there and our dps will be balanced with that gearset in mind.

then you might as well make it a function of itemlevel (like armor)