Didactic's Mage Patch Notes

[Susira]

Omg please request

New Glyph: Glyph of the Raging Magus: Allows you to flip your Refreshment table in rage if you cannot receive any more food from it.

on the official forums, lets go sign it!

[Deleted]

Its pretty clear you only considered these for pve, as your notes would just kill mage pvp outright.

Only agreeable changes :
• New Glyph: Glyph of the Raging Magus: Allows you to flip your Refreshment table in rage if you cannot receive any more food from it.
• Glyph of Uncertainty, which causes your Polymorph spell to randomly alternate between different variations.
• Glyph of Illusion no longer has a cooldown.

[Elegiac]

Its pretty clear you only considered these for pve, as your notes would just kill mage pvp outright.

Only agreeable changes :
• New Glyph: Glyph of the Raging Magus: Allows you to flip your Refreshment table in rage if you cannot receive any more food from it.
• Glyph of Uncertainty, which causes your Polymorph spell to randomly alternate between different variations.
• Glyph of Illusion no longer has a cooldown.

Perhaps, but it doesn't change the fact that the combination of Deep Freeze and Shatter presents one of the problems that make Mages so ridiculously overpowered in PvP.

Xiun has a better idea of how to fix mages from a PvP standpoint than I do, I will admit.

[Zukumani]

These are some good idea's. I personally don't agree with them all but what i do agree with is the Flip mage table glyph, thats a game changer for me.

[celinamuna]

More then half of those sound too op.

[Elegiac]

More then half of those sound too op.

Specifics, s'il vous plait.

[Henako]

I really can't help but read this and think a lot of this is pretty silly.

[Elegiac]

I really can't help but read this and think a lot of this is pretty silly.

Bully for you. Give some specific reasons.

[Deleted]

./bravo!

Magey hat off for you sir, great to see some creativity at work for once! As for the grumping ones, the OP's point ain't to promote these changes as the only possible option. To me, it's rather a question of proving how easily good ideas can come to one who's bothering to give some thought to it. His ideas might not be perfect but they are creative and open to be perfected through discussion and debate (which is what he's after, not dismissive one-liners). If this had been Blizz's procedure when designing our talents we as mage community would stand at a far better place right now.

[ripponesan]

I have no qualitiy of life issue with my level 90 mages. Nor do i have problems with repetition or our level 90 talents.
You got some points there, and some ideas seem valid on first sight, but overall i must say, dont repair what aint broken. Mages are fine.

[Meillassoux]

I have no qualitiy of life issue with my level 90 mages. Nor do i have problems with repetition or our level 90 talents.
You got some points there, and some ideas seem valid on first sight, but overall i must say, dont repair what aint broken. Mages are fine.

Nop Arcane ain't fine. Check it out first , then come and post something like that. Try using Invocation as Arcane and see how awful synergy they make and try playing with RoP in every fight and you'll notice that when it comes to Arcane everything looks bad, it's a broken and mostly dead specc. Fire and Frost are fine but because of the last talents they are not fluid. Maybe not being fluid doesn't concern you but for most people that takes away much of the fun the class would provide. Being ok yourself with a problematic situation and being ignorant about it are two different things. It would be wiser to choose the first while refusing falling into the second category.

[KBWarriors]

Doh! I was reading these and thinking they were real.

I was a bit excited... now to go read the real patch notes.

Ring of Frost now has a 45 second cooldown (was 30 seconds).
The duration of Deep Freeze has been reduced to 4 seconds.
Frost Bomb will now detonate after 6 seconds (was 5 seconds). Detonation speed is still affected by haste.
A new Minor Glyph has been added: Discreet Magic. This glyph prevents Nether Tempest, Living Bomb, Frost Bomb, Arcane Barrage, and Inferno Blast from affecting targets more than 5 yards away from the primary target.
Water Elemental
New Pet Ability: Water Jet. Water Jet channels a jet of frigid water at the target, dealing Frost damage over 4 seconds. Frostbolts cast by the pet's owner that hit the target while it is being blasted with icy water will grant a charge of Fingers of Frost. This ability has a 24 second cooldown (shared with Freeze) and a 1 second cast time.
Mage Armor now reduces the duration of harmful Magic effects by 25% (was 35%).
The damage absorbed by Ice Barrier has been reduced by 25%.
Pyroblast now has a 3 second cooldown. The cooldown on Pyroblast is affected by haste.
Combustion's periodic damage is now based only on the current Ignite, instead of both Ignite and Pyroblast. Damage has been increased to bring it up to approximately the same level as before.
Blazing Speed may now be triggered after recieving damage in any amount.
The mana cost of Spellsteal has been increased to 21% of base mana (was 7%).
Fixed an issue with Glyph of Icy Veins that could prevent all three bolts from firing.
Fixed an issue with Glyph of Icy Veins that could prevent the affected abilities from doing the correct damage.

Ouch, apparently we took a little hit on Deep Freeze. Our Frost Bomb gained another second (yes, it does matter when it comes to DPS), our pets get an ability that hopefully doesn't do poop damage and Ice Barrier got a nerf but yet DKs still get insane absorbs.

I honestly haven't done Fire in a while, I can't comment on whether it'll change the DPS significantly or not. They apparently still really hate our Spellsteal so that gets a pretty significant mana adjustment. Spellstealing Resto Druids is the only viable way I've found to allow a group to kill them. Otherwise, they just keep hots up and LoL hopping around.

Meh, I'm leveling up a Warrior anyways.. guess I'll use the mage to help level up the guild.

[Deleted]

• Glyph of Blink has been altered; with the Rune of Power talent, Blink will instead transport you to your most recently cast Rune of Power within 25 yards.

That is just excellent, fun, usable and would fix at least partially Rune of Power being so pain to use. Would need longer CD on Blink though or it would be too good.

[Disgruntler]

I can tell someone doesn't actually play a mage.

So, after reading the PTR changes to the Level 90 Mage talents, I got fed up with how Blizzard is handling things and decided to write my own patch notes. It's a long read, so apologies in advance.

General
• Ice Barrier is now a baseline spell for the Frost specialization, gained at level 30. Arcane and Fire recieve their own versions of the spell, Nether Barrier and Flame Barrier, respectively.

Mages don't need it baseline.

• Polymorph and its variant spells have been grouped under a flyout menu. Furthermore, all Polymorph glyphs have been removed and made baseline variants of the spell.

Putting things on flyout menus works for out-of-combat utility stuff like portals and teleports. Putting your polymorphs onto it means you can no longer hotkey it by dragging it from your spellbook. Now you'd HAVE to macro it simply to be able to CAST it without clicking it. Awful change.

• Arcane Charges no longer appear as a debuff, but are indicated in a new resource bar below the default mana bar.

I'd put it as a ui element closer to the center of the screen similiar to warlock soul shards myself.

• Critical Mass is no longer a passive ability for the Fire specialization. Instead, Scorch has been made a baseline spell for the Fire tree, and casting two Scorches in a row will generate Critical Mass on the mage lasting 20 seconds.

Having to cast ONE scorch to get critical mass up was bad enough. Now you want fire to cast two... why? Is fire not keeping track of enough things for you?

• The Shatter passive has been removed. Instead, Fingers of Frost causes your Ice Lance spell to treat the target as if it was Frozen as well as always critically strike, and Brain Freeze also guarantees a critical strike from your Frostfire Bolt spell.

Unnecessary nerf for fire and arcane in pvp.

• The Frostburn Mastery has been changed. Instead of providing a damage bonus against Frozen targets, it now increases the bonus damage granted from your Frostbolt debuff. Furthermore, the Frostbolt debuff now also applies to the Frostfire Bolt spell.

Thereby changing the frost rotation from what it is now to:

Frostbolt.

Sorry, mate. Wrath era frost was boring and stupid. The way it is now your procs are meaningful and strong, and you'll actually care. Taking the damage out of ice lance and frostfire bolt will only make frostbolt the go-to spell for all situations.

• Flamestrike no longer has a cast time.

Why?

• Arcane Explosion will always generate an Arcane Charge if at least three targets are hit.
• Teleport: Vale of Eternal Blossoms and Portal: Vale of Eternal Blossoms have been added to their respective flyout menus.

• Spellsteal's mana cost has been reduced to 3% of base mana, but now has a 6 second cooldown.[/quote]

Finally change that actually makes sense.

Talents
• Presence of Mind now has a passive component that gives your damaging spells a 10% chance of resetting its cooldown.
• Scorch has been replaced with a new talent, Magic Attunement, that causes your Blink to allow the next two mage spells with a cast time of less than 4 seconds to be cast while moving. The effect cannot occur more than once every minute.
• Ice Floes no longer has charges, and permits the casting of all mage spells while moving when it is active.

Magic Attunement is antisynergistic with itself. Blink is to make you have to move less when casting, not to encourage casting while moving. What functionality have you gained here? All you've done is made a macro with Blink/Ice Floes into a talent so you can justify buffing Ice Floes.

No sense is made here. If Ice Floes is so bad, why do you need to buff it and then make another talent which is just Ice Floes with a different name and trigger?

• Ice Barrier has been replaced with a new talent, Prismatic Cloak, which increases the health of your Mirror Images by 50% and causes all damage you take to be distributed amongst your Images while they are active.

Again, Ice Barrier doesn't need to be baseline, and the last thing you need is a defensive talent that STACKS with Ice Barrier.

• Frostjaw has been replaced with Deep Freeze, which is no longer baseline. Additionally, Arcane and Fire Mages may consume a charge of Arcane Missiles or a proc of Heating Up to cast Deep Freeze, in addition to using it against Frozen targets.

Why do Arcane and Fire Mages get the ability to use a buff to ignore the frozen requirement but Frost doesn't? This makes no sense at all either. You're aware Frost does NOT have the ability to use Fingers of Frost to Deep Freeze? Do you even play this class?

• Mage bomb spells have been heavily reworked.

o All mage specializations receive a spec-specific bomb spell, Mana Bomb for Arcane, Living Bomb for Fire, and Frost Bomb for Frost. These spells deal X damage over 12 seconds and then explode for Y damage, and have a 1 target limit.

I prefer being able to choose the bomb, but that's just me.

o Nether Tempest has been renamed Medivh's Potency, which increases the damage over time of your bomb spell by 100%, removes the target limit and final explosion, and causes it to deal 50% of its damage over time to a nearby target every tick.
o Living Bomb has been renamed Sunstrider's Fury, which increases the target limit of your Bomb spell to 3 targets, and causes it to automatically spread to an additional two targets within 10 yards of the primary target.
o Frost Bomb has been renamed Malygos' Mastery, which causes your Bomb spell to have a 1.5 second cast and 6 second cooldown (both reduced by haste), increases the final damage by 100%, removing the damage over time portion and also reducing its countdown to 5 seconds (also reduced by haste). Additionally, all targets affected by your Bomb's damage will be slowed by 70% for 2 seconds.

Not sure what this is supposed to accomplish.

• Invocation has been modified to provide a potent passive effect based on your specialization.
o Arcane: Casting Arcane power now resets the cooldown of Evocation, and causes it to reduce the mana cost of your spells by 20% rather than increasing it.
o Fire: Every time you deal direct Fire damage that does not critically strike, your critical strike chance with Fire spells will be increased by 10% stacking up to 10 times or until you deal a direct Fire damage critical strike with any spell except Inferno Blast.
o Frost: Your Summon: Water Elemental spell now summons a Greater Water Elemental that does increased damage.
• Rune of Power is now instant cast and can be cast twice before incurring a 10 second cooldown. The damage bonus has been increased to 20%, and will now be summoned at the Mage's feet rather than being a targetable spell.
• Incanter's Ward has been replaced with a new talent, Focus Magic. Whenever you strike a target below 20% health with Arcane Blast, Frostfire Bolt, Fireball, or Frostbolt, the target will recieve the Focus Magic debuff which increases your damage against that target by 25%.

Ugh. This is just awful design. Awful. There's no theme to this tier. It makes no sense. Your first talent is just a hodgepodge of random complication simply for the purpose of being complicated, your second talent is a QoL fix but could be served better simply by making RoP instant cast with no cooldown, and your last ability is just 'Give execute to mages' which, I'm sorry to say, is kinda missing the entire point of this tier.

Some of your glyphs are all right ideas... but most of this is unworkable trash and is doing nothing to help the class.

Un. Workable. Trash.

[Imnick]

Our Frost Bomb gained another second (yes, it does matter when it comes to DPS), our pets get an ability that hopefully doesn't do poop damage.

Are you talking about PvP? It makes no difference at all to PvE because the cooldown is longer than the bomb's duration at all times.
The only time it will ever be a DPS loss is the loss of a single tick if you always got the killing blow on the boss with Frost Bomb.

I am also not sure you understand the purpose of the Water Elemental's new spell, it is a single target replacement for Freeze (they will presumably share a cooldown) that lets you generate two charges of FoF with only one target and without needing a ground targeting reticule. The damage it does it fairly irrelevant.

[Elegiac]

I can tell someone doesn't actually play a mage.

Really? Who's that? I've been playing a mage for nigh on eight years now.

Mages don't need it baseline.

Then we may as well remove the spell. The fact of the matter is that active mitigation such as that provided by Ice Barrier will always be preferable to situational mitigation (like Temporal Shield) or mobility (like Blazing Speed). This is the reason everyone takes it; Blizzard's current logic is that "because everyone is taking it, it must be OP". This is not the case.

Putting things on flyout menus works for out-of-combat utility stuff like portals and teleports. Putting your polymorphs onto it means you can no longer hotkey it by dragging it from your spellbook. Now you'd HAVE to macro it simply to be able to CAST it without clicking it. Awful change.

Perhaps I should have clarified; in a fly-out menu for the spellbook, which can be pulled out at need.

I'd put it as a ui element closer to the center of the screen similiar to warlock soul shards myself.

Which was the point of Glyph of Manifest Power. Warlock Soul Shards are represented as a UI element beneath the mana bar, which is what I am suggesting for Arcane Charges given that it is a resource.

Having to cast ONE scorch to get critical mass up was bad enough. Now you want fire to cast two... why? Is fire not keeping track of enough things for you?

No, it isn't. It's hurrdurr at the moment - the point of this is to create some more diversity in the rotation without impacting mobility.

Unnecessary nerf for fire and arcane in pvp.

Arcane as it stands is unworkable in pvp owing to how back-heavy the rotation is. The problem with Deep Freeze is that it gives mages the impression of being overpowered because we can global people through Deep Freeze, to the point at which our pvp balance revolves around that spell. By removing the problem component that shatter creates, other areas can be buffed to compensate.

Thereby changing the frost rotation from what it is now to:

Frostbolt.

Sorry, mate. Wrath era frost was boring and stupid. The way it is now your procs are meaningful and strong, and you'll actually care. Taking the damage out of ice lance and frostfire bolt will only make frostbolt the go-to spell for all situations.

Perhaps you don't play Frost. The Frostbolt debuff also increases Ice Lance and Waterbolt damage against affected targets; what I am suggesting is making -that- the focus of the mastery in order to resolve the problem it creates in a PvP environment.

Why?

Quality of life.

Magic Attunement is antisynergistic with itself. Blink is to make you have to move less when casting, not to encourage casting while moving. What functionality have you gained here? All you've done is made a macro with Blink/Ice Floes into a talent so you can justify buffing Ice Floes.

It was honestly just something I was throwing out in order to generate some brainstorming about further talent improvements down the line.

No sense is made here. If Ice Floes is so bad, why do you need to buff it and then make another talent which is just Ice Floes with a different name and trigger?

Blink is on a 15 second cooldown. Ice Floes on a minute cooldown. The disparity is meant to encourage a choice between the two.

Again, Ice Barrier doesn't need to be baseline, and the last thing you need is a defensive talent that STACKS with Ice Barrier.

Again, the active mitigation Ice Barrier provides will always be more attractive than any other talent choice unless it is nerfed to the point of being useless. Prismatic Cloak enhances an existing defensive cooldown which is beneficial for both PvP and PvE without being obviously more attractive than Temporal Shield. Blazing Speed is a whole other ballpark which perhaps should be a T1 talent instead.

Why do Arcane and Fire Mages get the ability to use a buff to ignore the frozen requirement but Frost doesn't? This makes no sense at all either. You're aware Frost does NOT have the ability to use Fingers of Frost to Deep Freeze? Do you even play this class?

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=112965

The Fingers of Frost effect causes your next Ice Lance or Deep Freeze to act as if your target were frozen, and increases Ice Lance damage by 25% for 15 sec.

Do you?

Not sure what this is supposed to accomplish.

Purely a flavor change. I hate having to cast out of school spells.

Ugh. This is just awful design. Awful. There's no theme to this tier. It makes no sense. Your first talent is just a hodgepodge of random complication simply for the purpose of being complicated, your second talent is a QoL fix but could be served better simply by making RoP instant cast with no cooldown, and your last ability is just 'Give execute to mages' which, I'm sorry to say, is kinda missing the entire point of this tier.

The theme of the tier I designed was pretty much just variety in choices of damage improvements. Again, I am truly open to suggestions as regards the T6 problem, and this was just a suggestion for a -possible- fix.

The current theme of the final tier hampers one spec while being utterly pointless for the other two. I would rather have flavorful variety in damage buffs than the crap we have to work with at present.

Un. Workable. Trash.

Such vitriol; you mad? At least I know my mechanics.

Fingers of Frost can't be used for Deep Freeze. Hah, good one.

[Imnick]

Without Mastery you'd never use Brain Freeze procs though, and if 3 stack Frostbolt Ice Lance is equivalent to the damage of Ice Lance with Mastery now, your rotation would be FB FB FB and then spam Ice Lance until Frostbolt is about to fall off. The only benefit to the proc would be extra crit.

There is a reason the Mastery is what it is. You haven't provided an adequate replacement.

[Elegiac]

Without Mastery you'd never use Brain Freeze procs though, and if 3 stack Frostbolt Ice Lance is equivalent to the damage of Ice Lance with Mastery now, your rotation would be FB FB FB and then spam Ice Lance until Frostbolt is about to fall off. The only benefit to the proc would be extra crit.

There is a reason the Mastery is what it is. You haven't provided an adequate replacement.

Again, this is what I suggested:

• The Frostburn Mastery has been changed. Instead of providing a damage bonus against Frozen targets, it now increases the bonus damage granted from your Frostbolt debuff. Furthermore, the Frostbolt debuff now also applies to the Frostfire Bolt spell.

The intent of this is to make Mastery pretty much a flat damage increase by tying it into an existing mechanic, the Frostbolt debuff which is designed to give Frost a ramp-up. You would still have to burn Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze procs given that Ice Lance's damage against unfrozen targets is miniscule, and both would recieve inbuilt critical strike guarantees.

[Deleted]

I'm 50/50 about these, but the 3 that caught my eyes were:

Scorch talent: Blink and cast, brilliant..needs work though. We can blink and scorch atm anyway and there might a time where you wont want to use those charges after a blink, so it's a waste.

Glyph of blink: The idea is great, but not with blink. There should be a secondary ability with RoP a bit like the warlock DC. This would share the same CD as blink, because there will be times when you want to blink to location.

Glyph of Arcane Explosion: Not sure about this. So AE+IL spam? Is the explosion damage determined by the single target spell cast? How about If AE hits 4+ target 1 of which is already affected by a bomb, AE will spread the bomb to all targets within 10 yards. This cannot occur more often than every 15 seconds. OFC the bombs limits are taken into consideration.

Edit: typo

[Elegiac]

I'm 50/50 about these, but the 3 that caught my eyes were:

Scorch talent: Blink and cast, brilliant..needs work though. We can blink and scorch atm anyway and there might a time where you wont want to use those charges after a blink, so it's a waste.

Glyph of blink: The idea is great, but not with blink. There should be a secondary ability with RoP a bit like the warlock DC. This would share the same CD as blink, because there will be times when you want to blink to location.

Glyph of Arcane Explosion: Not sure about this. So AE+IL spam? Is the explosion damage determined by the single target spell cast? How about If AE hits 4+ target 1 of which is already affected by a bomb, AE will spread the bomb to all targets within 10 yards. This cannot occur more often than every 15 seconds. OFC the bombs limits are taken into consideration.

Edit: typo

I think you misunderstood the Magic Attunement talent....it's designed to -replace- Scorch, not modify it.

I disagree, having the secondary ability would give mages too much mobility.

As for AE, I just think it's silly we have to be in melee range to use an AoE ability. But, that's just me.