What are your opinions on mage direction as of patch 5.2 on the PTR

[Deleted]

There's no doubt that you can still top meters with a spec that isn't the best. I raid with a warlock who plays destruction and while myself as frost or our assassination rogue usually top the meters he has his fights and is always close behind us.

I suppose at heart we all just like doing big numbers and feel a bit cheated that arcane is currently a fair way ahead of the other specs. We'll just have to wait and see what comes out of the ptr. Then we can start compaining all over again.

Hmm, I would make the argument that none of the 3 of you are playing 'optimal' specs overall, and this could perhaps be a reason. Another thing to consider is that in 25 man when you have multiple of different classes there's a lot more intra-class competition, and being able to top meters when you're a "sub-optimal" spec AND against people of your class who are at a similar level skill-wise whilst playing an "optimal" spec is something quite different.

I'm relatively new to wow only having started in 4.3 and back then affliction seemed to be the worst of the warlock specs and I played arcane and quite comfortably topped meters.

Currently on live our warlock plays destruction and we're terribly overgeared for where we are in progression which just ends up hurting our dps (our dps' average ilvl is about 493 and we only just downed heroic elegon). I suppose I've never questioned our dps as I'm just happy to be raiding at all.

In 4.3 it depended on the fight but Affliction was very strong all the same. Fire was King of Mages during 4.3 even after it got nerfed.

Another thing - if you're over-geared for current content it doesn't hurt your DPS; it helps it. With certain exceptions the shorter a fight is, the better your overall group DPS will be.

[jtmzac]

Hmm, I would make the argument that none of the 3 of you are playing 'optimal' specs overall, and this could perhaps be a reason. Another thing to consider is that in 25 man when you have multiple of different classes there's a lot more intra-class competition, and being able to top meters when you're a "sub-optimal" spec AND against people of your class who are at a similar level skill-wise whilst playing an "optimal" spec is something quite different.

In 4.3 it depended on the fight but Affliction was very strong all the same. Fire was King of Mages during 4.3 even after it got nerfed.

Another thing - if you're over-geared for current content it doesn't hurt your DPS; it helps it. With certain exceptions the shorter a fight is, the better your overall group DPS will be.

I agree that because I'm in a 10-man team I don't have the competition and comparison with other mages. I've never liked the idea of 25man raiding and its always seemed getting 10 people together was hard enough.

I just said the wrong thing when I said it hurts dps by being overgeared. I should have said it makes some fight mechanics harder.

[Elegiac]

May I ask why? You have been one of the most vocal people in wanting major overhauls to mages and it seems a bit strange that you're opposed to the idea.

Why? Because I don't want to be turned into a hybrid class just for the sake of spec identity. Furthermore, I don't want what happened to Blood to happen to Arcane.

[jtmzac]

Why? Because I don't want to be turned into a hybrid class just for the sake of spec identity. Furthermore, I don't want what happened to Blood to happen to Arcane.

Despite making the most sense I don't think that arcane should be turned into the healing spec as its too unique with it being based on mana management.

I think frost could be turned into a healing spec and renamed but I have a feeling all the pvp'ers would disagree.

What's so bad about being a hybrid class? It offers a lot more choice then being stuck with 3 dps specs.

[Methusula]

Despite making the most sense I don't think that arcane should be turned into the healing spec as its too unique with it being based on mana management.

I think frost could be turned into a healing spec and renamed but I have a feeling all the pvp'ers would disagree.

What's so bad about being a hybrid class? It offers a lot more choice then being stuck with 3 dps specs.

The problem, one that Blizzard has cited themselves while shooting this idea down, is that people generally roll a pure for a reason. One of the major reasons being specifically that they will not have to build a tank set and learn how to tank, or a heal set and be asked to switch specs and heal when they would rather dps. You give mages a healer spec and a very large chunk of raiding guilds would ask their mages to spec for that essentially alienating them from their class.

[Imnick]

I wouldn't mind them adding a fourth spec but people have given some good reasons above why they probably won't
And we haven't even mentioned the nightmare of balancing the equivalent of 3.33 new classes being added to the game at the same time, they wouldn't give just mages a fourth spec

[Pharmakeia]

Man up and adapt

[Imnick]

While that may have been your very first post ever that doesn't really excuse you for skipping 7 pages of reading, or justify posting a response reading "man up" as a reply to literally nobody at all.

[Elegiac]

Despite making the most sense I don't think that arcane should be turned into the healing spec as its too unique with it being based on mana management.

I think frost could be turned into a healing spec and renamed but I have a feeling all the pvp'ers would disagree.

What's so bad about being a hybrid class? It offers a lot more choice then being stuck with 3 dps specs.

Mages are not healers, either lorewise or mechanic wise. As was said, some of us play pure classes for a reason.

[zomgDPS]

All this talk about healing mages coupled with Blizz's recent comments on Arcane mages using the "healer resource model" got me thinking...


I'm not convinced having the Arcane mana system being modeled on how healer mana works is a good thing. There are fundamental differences between healing and DPS which does not permit the healer mana model carrying over very well when translated onto a DPS class.

Healing, unlike DPS, can be "too much". There is a natural cap to healing, that being, the 100% HP mark. Any healing above this point is meaningless (overheals). Due to this, there is a natural throttle to healing. A throttle that forces the healers to consider their healing spells as well as their healing efficiency. Hence, for healing, you don't necessarily want to heal as much as possible, but instead, you want to heal just the right amount. In fact, iirc, the only time in WoW history where this was not the case was the Dreamwalker fight all the way back in ICC.
However, there is no such thing as "overDPSing". In general, you want to DPS as hard as you can for as long as you can.

Due to this simple difference, I'm not sure its a good idea to try to model the resource model of a DPS class on the resource model of healers. The mentality between the two is too different to make them comparable.

How this translates into context is as follows. Unlike healers, Arcane mages have no reason to use, for example, a more efficient but less 'throughput' cycle, since, by their very nature, they need to be DPSing as hard as possible (i.e using max dps) for as long as they can. This is an especially poignant point when you take into account that Arcanists cannot really turn "mana into damage" as is advertised since, as we somewhat established earlier, there really isn't a 'burn' phase or some similar mechanic that rewards the Arcanist with more damage at one point in a fight due to him 'saving' or 'managing' his mana in some other point in the fight. At best, the version of 'mana management' that Arcane has today is one which, instead of providing bonuses for good 'management' is actually more a game of 'do X or you are nerfing yourself' (i.e. instead of being a bonus that the Arcanist gains, the 'management' is actually just the arcanist preventing himself nerfing himself)
Healers, on the other hand, have ample reason to mix up their heals (as far as the efficiency and throughput of their heals is concerned), in order to prevent overhealing (and hence, wasted resources).

The concept of 'wasted resources' doesn't really work for Arcane either, unless you consider "excess regen" to be 'wasted resource'. But even if you do, then you can't really say Arcane is about 'mana management'. At best, you could say Arcane is about "mana regen management", which really doesn't sound too snazzy (since at best all you are doing is making sure you don't sit at 100% mana and 'waste' regen, which is booooring).

Another extremely fundamental difference that warns us against using healer models for DPS classes is that healing is, by its inherent nature, a reactive activity. I.e. the amount you need to heal is directly related to the amount of incoming damage (which is a variable outside your control). This is another concept that has no direct analog or mirror in the DPS world. Meaning, there really isnt' many fights out there where the target mob/boss is constantly being healed and so the DPS must throttle their DPS up and down in reaction to the Boss/mob being healed.

These ideas make me not like the statement made by Blizz. The statement being that they want to model Arcane's 'mana management' like healers'. I do not think the two work together and I do not think Blizz has thought through their idea of having Arcane as the "DPS spec that uses the Healer resource model".


If any of you have any ideas that shed light on how we can make sense of this, this is the time to share.

[Elegiac]

If any of you have any ideas that shed light on how we can make sense of this, this is the time to share.

As I said, leveraging Arcane Power in some way might be a pretty decent option. Perhaps not making it a damage increase, but instead increasing the benefit of Arcane Charges to Arcane Blast.

It might also give Arcane enough burst to become semi-viable in PvP (I agree, though; slow needs to be looked at).

[Imnick]

That just glosses over the problem, you can't tie the burn phase to a cooldown or we still aren't managing mana.
All that would mean would be we conserved until AP was off cooldown then burned and repeated.

Obviously your burn is always going to do more damage with AP up anyway but if we want mana to be meaningful you have to be able to enter a burn phase at any time, even if your CDs aren't up.

[Soulstrike]

Despite making the most sense I don't think that arcane should be turned into the healing spec as its too unique with it being based on mana management.

I think frost could be turned into a healing spec and renamed but I have a feeling all the pvp'ers would disagree.

What's so bad about being a hybrid class? It offers a lot more choice then being stuck with 3 dps specs.

how is freezing someone heal them??? its bit vague idea (a wacky one)

theres nothing wrong with hybrid class, but your idea is just off... for now

oh and 3 dps spec with different rotation

oh and zomgdps is back!! :P

i liked the idea swizzle bought up with mastery being X% increase in damage per arcane charge per mastery point

that would bring back the "burn" phase we liked in cata without hurting our keep an eye on mana stuff

[Elegiac]

That just glosses over the problem, you can't tie the burn phase to a cooldown or we still aren't managing mana.
All that would mean would be we conserved until AP was off cooldown then burned and repeated.

Obviously your burn is always going to do more damage with AP up anyway but if we want mana to be meaningful you have to be able to enter a burn phase at any time, even if your CDs aren't up.

Well, define 'mana management', then. The way I define it is a tradeoff between sustainability and damage; the issue being, AB spam is not as rewarding as it used to be.

[Stache]

Meanwhile at blizzard HQ:

<snip> Memes are against the general forum rules. - Shang

[nimryas]

zomgDPS, you should totally repost your criticism on the official forums. I wholeheartedly agree with you and I hope blizzard will see their own made flaws in the arcane design!

[jtmzac]

how is freezing someone heal them??? its bit vague idea (a wacky one)

I was trying to say the entire spec could just be replaced with a healing spec and frost would no longer exist.

As much as I would like a healing spec changing arcane just isn't the way to do it.

[Elegiac]

That just glosses over the problem, you can't tie the burn phase to a cooldown or we still aren't managing mana.
All that would mean would be we conserved until AP was off cooldown then burned and repeated.

Obviously your burn is always going to do more damage with AP up anyway but if we want mana to be meaningful you have to be able to enter a burn phase at any time, even if your CDs aren't up.

Alright, having thought about it; perhaps what I said about mana being obsolete for DPS and tanks applies to Arcane too. Perhaps Arcane needs its own resource, mana being retained for utility spells (if that even becomes necessary). In order to 'manage' a resource, perhaps we need active ways of generating it as well as consuming it. Let's call this resource Arcane Charge.

Under my proposed model, there are two Arcane phases. A Generation Phase, and a Burn Phase. The hinge between the two is Arcane Power, which is no longer a cooldown but a 'mode' style ability.

+ During the Generation Phase when Arcane Power is not active, all three Arcane damage spells generate charge. The rotation in this case would be Arcane Missiles when it procs > Arcane Barrage on cooldown > Arcane Blast.

+ The Burn Phase is initiated when the Mage activates Arcane Power. During this phase, the damage of Arcane spells is -greatly- increased, but Arcane Blast consumes Charge, Arcane Missiles is Charge neutral, and Arcane Barrage generates Charge. The rotation would become Arcane Barrage > AM proc > Arcane Blast.

The goal of the playstyle would be to maximize the number of Burn Phases and minimize the number of Generation Phases. Alter Time would become useful as a 'save point' for Charge, and Mana Gem can be reworked to provide a surge of Charge rather than mana, allowing for a prolonged burn phase but also making it a potent burst cooldown.

Just another crazy Didactic idea, but one I think has some merit.

[Polarthief]

I think frost could be turned into a healing spec and renamed but I have a feeling all the pvp'ers would disagree.

FROST to heal? Sounds ridiculous.

Fire or Arcane would make a much better nominee for a healer class. Fire could use heat (energy) to refresh and renew players, as well as cauterize people when needed. Arcane could use time-based spells to heal players in an interesting way. They could undo damage done to players (would have a cap), slow down bosses to deal less damage (which would be a unique mechanic, especially for a healer), or who knows what other things the devs could come up with for time-based spells?

Frost as a healing specc just makes no sense at all, unless it's to melt their frost spells with fire spells and using water as a healing source, in which case, FFB would become a primary heal spell.

[Deleted]

I really like the idea of Time as a fourth, healing, spec the best. You can build healing spell rather easily around time, just follow the whole "reversing damage/turning back time" idea. And then we'd have an actual spec based on Time, a theme they keep telling us is important to the Mage class but other than 3 spells, one of which is a copy of another spell, I don't really see it.
Temporal Shield an Alter Time are both good as a start in this direction, now do more...

As for direction in general - kinda bleak actually. Arcane will be nerfed, we'll have to wait and see how badly. I switched back to Fire for now, just to test that again now that I can reach barely acceptable levels of crit (definitely seeing a drop on single target dps), and Fire won't be nerfed again, hopefully. I like them going back to 4 Charges but ... wait and see. Arcane isn't my favorite spec anyway, just played it because Fire got f*cked. And as much as I hate the RNG in Fire I actually somewhat enjoy Fire more again.

And now Ghostcrawler just tweeted how Mages have a lot of cools spells and are I guess super-duper-great. And they did the Warlock overhaul in Cata because Locks lacked a strong class identity (seriously?!), something that is also true for Mages but obviously they just don't see it. So ... yeah... guess we can't expect any major changes/revamps there anytime soon...