Beta Mage Videos/Streams/Data/Discussion

[Kuni Zyrekai]

The numbers might be a few percentage points off, but it was a significant enough jump to make me take notice of it. The FFB and IL damage I was seeing on beta is what has me worried the most, tbh. 91-131k crits from instant cast spells at level 85 doesn't sound like it will last to live, but it also feels bad when you just can't get a proc through an entire Frozen Orb or Frost Bomb. Might just have been my bad luck.

We'll just have to see where it leads at this point. As I've said before, I'm much more afraid of the arcane mage with shatter and a GCD-less deep freeze than I am of frost in PVP right now. In PVE, we had a lot of ground to cover to catch up to the other two specs. If this is how it's going down, then it's how it goes.

I personally haven't had any issues with proc starvation, but that could just be luck or my being used to getting shit on by RNG gods. I seemed to average procs every 4 frostbolts from either type. NT as bomb of choice, because I hate frost bomb in everything except animation.

[Emberess]

i have a small question on arcane barrage, if there's only one target and you have 4 chargers of the arcane charge, does it launch 4 powerful arcane barrages at the one target?

[Shangalar]

He he he, while that would be ridiculously powerful, unfortunately it does not. The wording on Arcane Charge even says that for every charge, Barrage hits an additional target.

[Ichifails]

Hello guys, I made a video showing off the new spells for mages and updated animations. I don't really play my mage on live (level 84 from mining) so it's not in-depth in any way shape or form.


**Mod Note: Merged thread created for this video - this sticky is a more suitable place for it. - Heil **

[Emberess]

oh well , we can dream right

[Rekindled]

Swiz. I gotta disagree with you Fire feels pretty great (to each his own I suppose). Although I think that fire will get changed a little. Especially with numbers. Beta=Beta. The fact that I know that ignite is always rolling, combined with the knowledge that as soon as I have a FB crit I KNOW that I can get a hot streak proc. (I explain in this video at the 1:15 mark)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdbt2pyhaCE

It removes the randomness and gives me an extra thing to focus on.
Furthermore, I like that ignite is proc'd by every spell, that way At least I KNOW that there is always a decent combustion waiting for me.

(i think this is the point that you were making)
Also flame strike is weird but I dont agree that it should be used single target. I think that the inclusion of FS into combustion's damage is meant to encourage massive AoE nukage. As you pointed out the 2 second cast+ low damage (beta is beta) makes it difficult single target.

Anywho I have had a blast playing fire. Messing people up with a fireball/shatter inferno blast combo is AWESOME. and the addition of the different bomb spells is interesting to say the least.

I am sure that blizzard will balance the damage And personally I hope they keep the changes they have made to fire.

[Pasture]

I'm just happy that we can use Frostfire Bolt as Fire. Sure it's just a visual, but the Fireball spell effect is so tiny that Frostfire will always win out for me. Plus, the slow and Ice Barrier make Fire much easier to level with now, especially using Inferno Blast to force Hostreak procs.

As for the Combustion glyph:

Without: You get double the initial Combustion damage (ie Combustion has an initial hit as well as the dot) which could be significant. Depending on fight length you might get an entire extra Combustion in.

With: You will have built up a bigger Ignite by the time it is back off cooldown, meaning a bigger Combustion.

[Holtzmann]

[Fire plays great!]

I was going to make a long post explaining my opinions on how Fire plays now, but I'm just going to agree with everything Rekindled said up there on #46. Having a blast with fire, pun intended!

[Shangalar]

I'm reporting that Frost Nova is currently acting irrationally and proccing 1 or 2 stacks of Arcane Missiles when it doesn't hit anything and 0 or 1 stacks of Arcane Missiles when it actually does hit something (including critters)

This might seem to correlate with the Fingers of Frost + Frost Nova synergy which will allow you to stand in melee range as frost and use frost nova to proc fingers if you wish to do so (depends on future calculations I suppose).

I'm finally enjoying the Beta with my copied full 397 dragonwrath mage instead of the fake premade. EU realms have issues with the copying.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

This might seem to correlate with the Fingers of Frost + Frost Nova synergy which will allow you to stand in melee range as frost and use frost nova to proc fingers if you wish to do so (depends on future calculations I suppose).

They removed that text from FoF, and it never worked to begin with. Strange it's giving AM procs without hitting anything.

[Levia86]

Strange it's giving AM procs without hitting anything.

So does Arcane Explosion and I suspect other abilities as well.
Probably a bug that will be rectified.

[rektlol]

From what I've found in PvP is that mages are pretty strong, however their pet dies far too easily. So many times has a rogues DoT damage been enough just to kill my pet which is ridiculous

[Shangalar]

I do believe that there's something wrong with pet health, as whenever I cast mirror images, they seem to get killed instantly and the mobs come back to me. Could you compare it to live?

[Levia86]

I do believe that there's something wrong with pet health, as whenever I cast mirror images, they seem to get killed instantly and the mobs come back to me. Could you compare it to live?

Mirror Images aren't scaling with the mages stats in Beta at the moment but will most likely be fixed later on.
Just... don't mass pull and think MI will save you (I do that mistake all the time xD)

[v12dock]

I am very happy with Frost spec

[rektlol]

I am very happy with Frost spec

In PvP or PvE? I can't stand it in PvP. CoC root needs to come back or at least make frostbolt a quicker cast time.

[Nicc]

In PvP or PvE? I can't stand it in PvP. CoC root needs to come back or at least make frostbolt a quicker cast time.

Adding a root to CoC was a massive mistake in the first place, we've got enough dispellable roots without CoC Root

[sporkisfaster]

Here are my thoughts on Fire PvE so far:

I think they need to change Combustion back to using Living Bomb instead of Flamestrike. It just makes no sense to use it. Nerfing LB to make sure it isn't OP is fine with me but it just makes so much more sense not to use an AOE as a dot for combustion.

Flamestrike should also have a glyph to make it like blast wave. I think doing so would be interesting an make glyphing and choosing archetypes much more fun.


Ignite still feels a little weird. For example, I'll spam Fireball at a training dummy and each hit will generate the Ignite dot on the enemy. When the dot is re-applied, it will add whatever is remaining in the dot to the new dot. If spammed at normal intervals, this should steadily rise the Ignite overall dot assuming the dot doesnt fall off (and it doesn't). However I've noticed that it will indeed climb up (to say about 4k) then randomly drop off and I can't figure out why. Maybe this is bugged? I'm not sure.

Inferno Blast needs to be taken off of the GCD. Now I'm not too keen on what would make things "OP" or "broken" or what have you but I don't think this would change much on those terms. What it would do however is give mages the ability to force hot streak to happen even though you've casted a fireball (which always happens to me) and can break your heating up buff. This seems to be what blizz was going for with Inferno Blast so I think it only makes sense to do it this way. Feel free to reply and correct me if this would be OP/broken for some reason.

Feel free to point out where I'm wrong/may be mis-thinking through some things etc. I'd like some discussion because Fire definitely seems clunky to me right now.

[Neichus]

If Inferno Blast were taken off the GCD then you'd just macro it into your major spells, because it would likely be higher DPS if constantly used than reserved to force Hot Streak crits. I think that'd be a massive mistake on their part.

Unfortunately I can't test much about Fire yet (my 85 mage is frost/arcane, leveling a fire mage but she's only 18) but I was under the impression that you could use it to force Hot Streak. That is, Fireball (crit) -> Fireball -> Inferno Blast (crit) would still trigger because while the order of spells doesn't promote a crit the game actually registers the spells landing as Fireball (crit) -> Inferno Blast (crit) -> Fireball due to travel time.

Also, I'm not convinced that Blizzard expects people to put up Flame Strike for Combustion. Yes, it's included but I see it as a bonus if I happen to be AoEing. Seems like the time taken to put Flame Strike down on a single target would have just been better spent adding another Pyroblast to the pile. I more imagine that Blizzard just put it there so that people wouldn't end up asking later why it wasn't included.

[sporkisfaster]

In terms of GCD I can see that. I've just noticed losing my procs A LOT with trying to mash IB with the FB travel time. Maybe I'm too close but there are fights where you have to stack and won't have the luxury of being optimal distance. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but I've lost a ton of heating up procs. I also don't think something you design a whole spell around (IB and forcing crits) should have to worry about game timing (travel time) to work (unless you're ignoring it entirely). That seems really clunky to me.

As far as combustion goes I would still prefer them to just add LB again and nerf it even with flame strike. Just seems like a DPS nerf over all not to add it even while nerfing LB if possible. Flamestrike just feels super awkward even with it being AoE centric.