[Mage] 5.2 Patch notes discussion

[Shangalar]

*READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING*

1. Spec mechanic questions should now be redirected to the official spec guides which will hopefully be updated as soon as possible:
Frost: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Mage-PVE-Guide
Fire: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ire-Mage-Guide
Arcane: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Mage-PvE-Guide

2. Do not bash specs, classes or anything.

3. Do not bash other posters, even if you think they're wrong, even if you know they're wrong, even if you don't like them.

4. This thread is more like a notice than a discussion. The patch is coming live on Tuesday and Wednesday, debating various issues which you think were overlooked isn't a bad thing, but is quite useless at this point.

5. *THANK YOU* to everyone who has participated in our long discussions about 5.2 in the last few months. Keep up the good work.

Link to full patch notes: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/889..._Live-3_5_2013

- Invocation now removes Evocation's cooldown, and reduces its channeling time and duration by 50%. A completed Evocation now grants 15% increased damage for 1 minute after an Evocation is completed,instead of 25% increased damage for 40 seconds. Passive mana regeneration is reduced by 50% only while Invoker's Energy is active.
- Glyph of Evocation now causes the Invocation talent to restore 10% (was 20%) health after completing an Evocation.
- Greater invisibility now has a 90-second cooldown (was 2.5 minutes).
- Frostbolt cast by Mirror Images now deals 50% more damage.
- Glyph of Fire Blast has been replaced with Glyph of Inferno Blast. Glyph of Inferno Blast causes damage-over-time effects spread by Inferno Blast to spread to 1 additional target.
- Blazing Speed is now a level-15 talent, replacing Scorch.
- Flameglow, a new talent is available at level 30 and replaces Blazing Speed. The passive ability encases the Mage in fiery energy, absorbing damage from each attack made against the Mage equal to 20% of their spellpower, up to a maximum of 30% of the attack.
- Ice Floes now has a 45-second cooldown (was 1 minute) and its duration has been increased to 15 seconds (was 10 seconds).
- Incanter's Ward can now be removed by magic dispels.
- Ring of Frost cast instantly through Presence of Mind now has a 2-second arming period before the Freeze effect is activated against targets in the area of effect. The 2-second arming period can be reduced by Haste.
- Temporal Ripples from Temporal Shield can no longer be dispelled.
- Deep Freeze now stuns the target for 5 seconds (was 4 seconds).
- Rune of Power increases the Mage's mana regeneration by 75% (was 100%) while standing inside the rune.
- Glyph of Deep Freeze now removes it from global cooldown but also reduces its duration by 1 second.
- Mage PvP 2-piece bonus now requires Counterspell to successfully interrupt a spell before applying the 4 second cooldown reduction to Counterspell.

- Arcane

- For Arcane Mages, Evocation now restores 40% (was 60%) of total mana over 6 seconds, and consumes all Arcane Charges. For each Arcane Charge consumed, the total amount of mana regenerated is increased by 10%, up to a maximum of 80% over 6 seconds. Evocation remains the same for Fire and Frost.
- Arcane Blast's damage has been reduced by 22.9% and mana cost has been increased to 1.66667% of base mana (was 1.5%).
- Arcane Missile's damage has been reduced by 22.1%.
- Arcane Barrage's damage has been reduced by 16.1%.
- Arcane Charges now stacks up to 4 times (was 6), increases damage by 50% (was 25%), and increases mana cost by 150% (was 75%).

- Fire

- Pyroblast has its direct damage reduced by 10%.
- Scorch is no longer a talent and is now available to all Fire Mages.

- Frost

- Fingers of Frost now has a 15% (was 12%) chance to activate from Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt and Frozen Orb, and a 5% (was 4%) chance to activate from Blizzard.
- Glyph of Ice Lance now causes Ice Lance to deal 50% damage to 1 additional target, up from 40%.
- Frostbolt now deals 32% more damage.

- Water Elemental
- Freeze no longer does damage and only provides Fingers of Frost on a successful freeze.

[Ericdizzle]

I was enjoying my mage. I don't think it'll be as fun for me as it was prior to this patch, we'll see though.

[Mastamage]

So I'm assuming that the CM revert to 1.3 is moot? Or maybe they just chose to not include it in the notes?

[Methusula]

So I'm assuming that the CM revert to 1.3 is moot? Or maybe they just chose to not include it in the notes?

i'm guessing the latter. They have said in the past that they don't always include every change in patch notes so they don't become novels.

[kif]

Remember that these patch notes are what apply to the current game, not to what was on ptr. Just imagine that all of the up/down in the ptr didn't exist.

[Shangalar]

Yeah there wouldn't really be a point to write "CM was reduced to 1.2 (reverted)".

[kif]

So I guess I missed the discussion, what was the change to RoP, that some have found trouble finding in the official notes?

[Shangalar]

It's in the notes I linked above...

Mana regen reduced from 100% to 75%. Combined with the removal of scorch and the damage reduction, it's a pretty serious blow to Arcane without which we could have lived.

[Elegiac]

It's in the notes I linked above...

Mana regen reduced from 100% to 75%. Combined with the removal of scorch and the damage reduction, it's a pretty serious blow to Arcane without which we could have lived.

I hypothesize they are trying to curtail Arcane to get Fire/Frost to be more popular. However, as Zomg has elaborated, this reveals a more critical problem - Mages are in exactly the same state as Shamans were once upon a time, brought only for BL/Heroism. The difference is, we don't have a heal spec to switch to.

[Markofcain]

Do you guys have any idea if the critical mass change was implemented? I checked the official patch notes and didnt see it on thier. Im not home to check it in game. Thanks

[Akraen]

Do you guys have any idea if the critical mass change was implemented? I checked the official patch notes and didnt see it on thier. Im not home to check it in game. Thanks

Nothing is changing with CM.

On the PTR it briefly was nerfed again, but that was reverted. So no need to add it to the patch notes.

[aycheff]

Looking forward to play Frost, been playing it on live for the last week and have really enjoyed it. Will be nice to play it in 5.2 with the little buffs. I kind of don't mind the Freeze nerf a bit. Even though it hurts on-demand burst a bit for AT and such, its one less (minor) cooldown have to worry about.

I'll be collecting Fire gear as well just incase that change to fire is absolutely necessary.

Hopefully Arcane will still be okay, and if needed it will get whatever buffs it needs to be competitive.

Happy 5.2 raiding guys!

[Markofcain]

I guess I miss understood the dev interview. I thought I read that they were the original CM nerf.

[Soulstrike]

I hypothesize they are trying to curtail Arcane to get Fire/Frost to be more popular. However, as Zomg has elaborated, this reveals a more critical problem - Mages are in exactly the same state as Shamans were once upon a time, brought only for BL/Heroism. The difference is, we don't have a heal spec to switch to.

well its only concern with if you are going for realm first/world first tbh (which i am :/) i think mage will be fine with more ToT gear but right now yea not looking flashy

[Grogfoot]

Remember that these patch notes are what apply to the current game, not to what was on ptr. Just imagine that all of the up/down in the ptr didn't exist.

Yeah there wouldn't really be a point to write "CM was reduced to 1.2 (reverted)".

Except there is really important changes left out. For example, the tooltip for Frostbolt on live reads:

...Also causes the target to take an additional 5% damage from your Frostbolt and Ice Lance, and your Water Elemental's Waterbolt and Water Jet [sic], stacking up to 3 times.

So by leaving out the deletion of the debuff for subsequent frostbolts, if you really are comparing those changes to live it would appear that frost received an absolutely outrageous amount of buffing. Pretty deceiving if you are only reading these final release notes.

[jtmzac]

But they didn't remove the frostbolt part of the debuff... That was a change that was reverted.

Frostbolt was buffed by 50 something percent when the debuff was changed to not affect frostbolt. Blizz then reverted the change and dropped the frostbolt buff back to 32%.

With the invocation change and the loss of freeze frost needed a buff to compensate. Its perfectly reasonable and will only look like an outrageous buff if you don't read the notes properly.

[Quilm]

But they didn't remove the frostbolt part of the debuff... That was a change that was reverted.

Frostbolt was buffed by 50 something percent when the debuff was changed to not affect frostbolt. Blizz then reverted the change and dropped the frostbolt buff back to 32%.

With the invocation change and the loss of freeze frost needed a buff to compensate. Its perfectly reasonable and will only look like an outrageous buff if you don't read the notes properly.

man i was looking everywhere to see if the stacking buff had been reverted or not i must have missed it somewhere along the way i thought it was still taken away

[Ericdizzle]

The buff to frost bolt doesn't excite me as much since they decided to make Incanter's Ward dispellable. In PvP I used Incanter's Ward for extra burst but now, with it being dispellable, it doesn't excite me, PvP wise.

[beingmused]

Looking forward to play Frost, been playing it on live for the last week and have really enjoyed it. Will be nice to play it in 5.2 with the little buffs. I kind of don't mind the Freeze nerf a bit. Even though it hurts on-demand burst a bit for AT and such, its one less (minor) cooldown have to worry about.

Logged on while at work to try out a few dailies....I am NOT used to seeing frostbolt crits for 130-140k

[zomgDPS]

I obviously gave more of my thoughts on a 'top level' view of 5.2 in this thread, however there were many smaller things I noticed that I didn't mention in that review that I guess I can comment on here:

* I seriously think players need to give Frost a solid try, it is actually turning out to be a very strong spec in 5.2

* Fire's blastwave effect on Flamestrike is still buggy (it doesn't work every flamestrike - almost as if it has its own internal cooldown?)

* Pretty much all kinds of "healing glyphs" e.g. Spellsteal, Evocation, Disengage, etc etc are jokes now given the broad spectrum off-spec healing zonewide nerfs, at least for PvP.

* Arcane mages still cannot 'burn mana for extra damage'. Spamming ABs is a DPS loss compared to maintaining a regular ABx4 ABr rotation.

* A fully cranked Frost mage will global you in PvP (in a deep no less). Prepare for the QQ storm that is inc.

With the invocation change and the loss of freeze frost needed a buff to compensate.

I've seen this statement around and I just want to correct it right here once and for all.

They already compensated Frost for the loss of freeze by upping the base proc chance of FoF. Mathed out it works out to be almost identical.

The Invocation change also maths out to be almost the same, since the % damage bonus was decreased, but the duration increased and cast time were decreased.


So no, the buffs to frost are straight up, no holds barred, buffs. Pure and simple. They aren't 'compensation' for some other loss. Everything that Frost lost in 5.2 was already compensated for. Frost is quite strong now.