Mage Ability Bloat-What's for the Chop

[Deleted]

Same with armors, in pve you almost stay always with the matching armor of your spec, the only exception that come to my mind is high end gear firemages staying in mage armor for catch bigger ignite. But in pvp, you switch a lot, it would be a big gameplay loss to have them baseline.

[Methusula]

And why does it hurt to have those spells?

You know there were situations when using your BF on a fireball made sense last expansion? There were also times I just had fun messing around with some other spells. Remember detect magic? Focus magic? Amplify and dampen magic? The list goes on.

The more we strip away from the mage class, the less wizardly the class feels.

I caution the playerbase against demanding such streamlined spec toolkits. Sure, for raids you won't notice any difference-- but the heart and soul of the class itself starts to become so compartmentalized with the variety and cool factor of a preacher's wife's underpants drawer.

And if you're too stupid to know that you shouldn't be using arcane blast as your main nuke when you're a fire mage, well... I don't think online games are for you.

I guess I should clarify my position.

I don't disagree with your reasons for not wanting to give up abilities. I just think given Blizzard's stance on the matter, that we will see stuff go away. In order to get new talents that by the way, could be better/more efficient versions of what we lose, I don't think it's realistic to expect our tool kit to continue to grow forever. It is simply too intimidating for new/returning player.

[Magemaer]

Alter Time is the best mage spell, it should be decoupled from DPS so it can be strictly utility.

No. Just no.
It's hard to understand people like you who want to get rid of everything that's making our gameplay more interesting, from having a dot spell to alter time play.
You want a class with a single cast to spam and a proc?
Please, stop.

[Methusula]

Same with armors, in pve you almost stay always with the matching armor of your spec, the only exception that come to my mind is high end gear firemages staying in mage armor for catch bigger ignite. But in pvp, you switch a lot, it would be a big gameplay loss to have them baseline.

They could put them on the stance bar and make them instant cast again.

[Deleted]

With the armor glyph, changing armor takes less time than a GCD, the only difference is that it's not instant and you have to plant for a second or so. That will not change much to my mind.

[Methusula]

With the armor glyph, changing armor takes less time than a GCD, the only difference is that it's not instant and you have to plant for a second or so. That will not change much to my mind.

Takes them off bars and out of spellbook, makes armors more dynamic in both pve and pvp. I think that's plenty change.

[Jarion]

You all are being FAR to conservative! Get ready to read my suggestions and rage!

Spellsteal - fun, yes, but rarely used anymore in PvE and part of the arms race problem in PvP
Frostfire bolt - rework brainfreeze (instantly fills icicles perhaps?)
Mirror Image - while it can be fun to use to escape death in PvE wipes, it could totally just be a passive proc.
Cone of cold/dragon's breath/arcane explosion - do we really need three melee range spells for a class that's supposed to stay at range?
scorch - make fireball castable on the move with some minor penalty
Arcane barrage - make missiles castable on the move with a minor penalty

[velde046]

I feel we have some bloat really, by bloat I consider the amount of spells you use often fduring fights or rotation.... so I'm ignoring teleoprt etc. since you only use those occasionally.
Personally I think there should be 3-4 abilities you use a lot with no CD or GCD.
Then 2 perhaps with a 1-2 min cooldown and 1 long CD. Total should not be more than 6-7 buttons max imo.

[Deleted]

On TP/portal, I'm a little addict: mage, engineer with argus relic and some other.

They could put them into 3 categories :
>> capital - orgr/SW, etc
>> important place - Sanctuary, Tol barad, Dalaran
>> other - ancient dalaran, terramore, stonard, ...

[Deleted]

If you're concerned about Portal bloat:

Get Opie. You'll know why

[Northem]

I don't see any bloat. We should have more spells, not less. Let retri pallies have 2 spellbook pages, we should have 8. We're mages after all.

I completely agree with you.

The mages do not need at all losing more powers and spells! Moreover, we want back the spells that were stolen from us!

Such as:

• Khadgar's Unlocking
• Detect Magic
• Amplify Magic / Dampen Magic
• Frost Ward / Fire Ward / Mage Ward
• Focus Magic
• Mana Shield
• Flame Orb
• Blast Wave
• etc...

Not to mention the countless mechanicals and passive talents we lost with the new "talent system" we have now ...
Have a look here to refresh your memory.

I, as an arcane mage, I miss [Arcane Concentration], [Magic Absorption], [Torment the Weak], [Improved Blink], [Arcane Potency] or [Incanter's Absorption] among other effects...

[Jarion]

It's amazing how polarizing this issue is. I am 100% in favor of reducing our active abilities and 100% against ANY of those coming back.

If they do this, they're going to piss people off no matter what.

[Akraen]

I don't think people are truly understanding the perspectives of those replying to this thread.

First, define bloat before you state your opinions.

For bloat during raid rotations do you feel you have too many keybinds to do adequate DPS and utilize defensive CDs? Do you find yourself wanting to take a passive like Flameglow because you don't have enough fingers and don't want to be a clicker?

What about PvP? What spells change for you in PvP?

What about non-PvP, non-raid situations: questing, scenarios, dungeons, challenge modes, roleplaying (don't care if you don't do it, others do) - not all spells do damage, and as the one wizard/mage type class, it sure would be nice to have a big spellbook of conjuration, flavor, and neat things. Why can't we shoot off fireworks at will? Why can't we draw magical runes? Why can't we polymorph a non-combat pet or ally? Why can't we change our own shape/size/appearance at will?

I'm one of those awful roleplayers some of you heard about, it's why I'm a Night Elf (tldr I was a druid but didn't like how Staghelm was treated, left the cenarion circle, and have been refining my arcane studies under the tutelage of Evenshade). I happen to also raid (imagine that), so I understand the desire to keep the raiding toolkit trim. But I also think it's a cool idea to bring back a big spellbook with a lot of tricks and cool things that makes us a bit different than warlocks with different colored spells.

As for Alter Time-- I love the skillcap on that spell. I'd suggest two types of Alter Time, one for DPS procs, and one removed from them. Alter Time is unbelievable utility and can save your life and do bizarre things to mechanics if executed separately from DPS (you can hit it before the tornado phase on Iron Qon and completely skip the phase, for example).

Mages to me should be about clever trickery, breaking the game by tearing big holes in space and time with arcane magic and obliterating our targets in between our clever mechanic twisting.

All the community seems to want is an overpowered nuking spec that remains flavor of the month. Learn to want more than a raid rotation guys, trust me... the game will mean more to you.

[Deleted]

My mage is my main and has less keybinds than almost every alt I have. We really don't have a bloat problem at all.

[Deleted]

And why does it hurt to have those spells?

You know there were situations when using your BF on a fireball made sense last expansion? There were also times I just had fun messing around with some other spells. Remember detect magic? Focus magic? Amplify and dampen magic? The list goes on.

The more we strip away from the mage class, the less wizardly the class feels.

I caution the playerbase against demanding such streamlined spec toolkits. Sure, for raids you won't notice any difference-- but the heart and soul of the class itself starts to become so compartmentalized with the variety and cool factor of a preacher's wife's underpants drawer.

And if you're too stupid to know that you shouldn't be using arcane blast as your main nuke when you're a fire mage, well... I don't think online games are for you.

I know (hope) you're not using this literally, but; the fuck? You can't even USE Arcane Blast as a Fire Mage. And if you actually think using detect/focus/amplify/focus magic were in anyway a good thing, or increased the 'depth' of WoW, then you need to go play another game.

We've moved on. There is no need for Ice Lance as Arcane/Fire. No need for Fire Blast as Arcane/Frost. No need for Blizzard as Fire/Arcane, no need for Flamestrike as Frost/Arcane. It's time for a new design. It won't come before 6.0, and even then, I doubt it, but hey. There's plenty of space in our spell book to trim, even beyond the spec dependant stuff.

[Volitar]

Cut Mage aoe down and remove mana gem.

[voltaa]

Cut Mage aoe down and remove mana gem.

NO, this is one of the best tools we have allowing us to cast an AB or two at max stacks with AP up to fish for missile procs, it is HUGE to maximizing arcane dps

[Imnick]

At the very least they could make Mana Gem one spell with a cooldown instead of a spell and an item
And make it arcane exclusive

Hell they could go the whole hog and give it mechanics, "your [spell] has an x% chance to reset the cooldown on mana gem" or "casting [spell] has an x% chance to generate a mana charge, cast consume mana gem to restore x mana per charge"
something like that

[Boricha]

I actually still use fire blast as frost to finish off people in pvp lol, it's a good 20k ish crit. I would get rid of Arcane explosion, because a melee range aoe is dumb for mages imo, and possibly flamestrike as well.

[voltaa]

At the very least they could make Mana Gem one spell with a cooldown instead of a spell and an item
And make it arcane exclusive

Hell they could go the whole hog and give it mechanics, "your [spell] has an x% chance to reset the cooldown on mana gem" or "casting [spell] has an x% chance to generate a mana charge, cast consume mana gem to restore x mana per charge"
something like that

but making it an item also adds a bit of management to it, you have three charges, so if you run out during the fight you can't use it anymore. But with proper timing you can actually make more gems midfight without losing any dps, for example on lei shen, I use the transition downtime to make more mana gems so that I can use a fourth one in the last phase of the fight, which allows me to free up a glyph space rather than using the waste of space 9 mana gem glyph.

While many will say "that's not very engaging gameplay" it is something that can seperate those who can min/max their usage, and those who can't/don't