Zomgdps' Review of 5.2 [Mages]

[Akraen]

Lhivera's had a lot of tweets about non-wow stuff. Haven't seen anything from Lhiv about mages in 5.2 at all.

I'd be happy to be the new MVP, doubt I'd ever be wanted though :P

[Zavri]

Lhivera doesn't even raid.... Hence why the MVP system is a joke.

[Kiry]

No offense, can we stay on track re: 5.2 mage reviews? In the past I've seen MVP discussions so sideways.

[Deleted]

Goddamn... first post 5.2 raid and I HATE it. Fire is so fucking RNG. At ilvl 500 I get 8824 crit rating out of my Haste-Arcane gear, which ends at close to 32% crit, which is just too little. A few times I got a 80k Ignite which just gives a disappointing 40k Combustion. And those were the good tries. Other times I just couldn't get the pyro crits I so desperately need...
Guess I'll try Frost tomorrow and hope it won't suck too bad, guess it can't be much worse.

[Shmeh]

Top 5 parses on almost every fight through out the expansion as fire, arcane and frost. Absolutely fucking hating fire right now. Most of the skill removed from it, and it's entirely rng now.

[Deleted]

After todays raid i just want lvlup new caster like moonking or warlcok. first boss our rogue output 200k dps we as mages didnt get over 140k. other bosses comletly same we tried so far all specs (ye with proper gear). And i am telling you it doesnt matter what you will play you will awlays be on bottom of dmg metters. Mage is so ahrd overnerfed and isnt viable anymore. Alot of 10man raid groups frop mages for warlocks and other casters after this patch also. I just wonder of Blizzard still think mages are balanced than gg.

[Deleted]

Same here. The entire raid I was overall dead last dps, second last at best. Our Warlock was still by far number 1, just in Demonology now instead of Affliction. So yeah Warlocks....

There were points in the raid today where I honestly considered the possibility that they'd replace me with someone else, some hybrid, some class that hasn't been nerfed to hell.

I'll try Frost now and hope it'll work out better, at least until I got enough gear/crit to go Fire again. Which I'm not looking forward to but supposedly it works better at higher gear levels.
And the most fun thing .... We can already look forward to another guaranteed Fire nerf with 5.3 or so because they just can't handle the damn scaling right.

If I actually had a raid-ready alternate character I *would* switch. It's just not fun anymore. Out lvl 90 talents suck so much the best option you have there is the passive one. Take it and forget about it. Yeah, sounds great, adds so much fun to the class.

[Xzan]

Yea so, Arcane is utter shit.
Last week's Tayak I had something over 90k dps. Tonight it was ~64k. A monk 7ilvl lower than me (I'm 490) had 63k. An undergeared hybrid... so much fun idd...

Tomorrow I'm gonna try the FFB-weaving. Just toyed around with it on dummies and it looked as a pretty solid 5-10k increase compared to the "by design" ABring once 4 charges are up and no AM procs are left.
The playstyle is so fucking shit now it's unbearable. Painful mana issues, lots of the times getting zero AM procs when reaching 4 charges. Literally nothing to cast while moving. It's so tedious... I think they should have given Arcane some new spell or something that would replace the Scorch if they really had to take it out or just tweak the numbers around the Scorch weaving actually. What we have now is a bad joke at best.

I also had Fire set prepared for testing (30% crit) and it ended as the fat lonely ugly kid in the corner that I'm not touching any time soon again. The 49k dps on Feng was seriously weak. Say what you will, but going without crits for 30 seconds did happen right there and I'm sure as hell not enjoying that casino spec one bit.
The fact that I'm bad at it doesn't help either.

Frost fared best for me... 70-90k sustained. Again depending a lot on procs though... having to Alter Time with just 1 FoF + MF sucks big time).
But damn the spec gets boring real fast. Taking Freeze outta the picture ruined it.

I ment to provide some WoLs, but the recording got borked somehow
Hmh, all things considered I don't seem to be enjoying either of the three specs right now

[Shangalar]

Fun story: Arcane's not that bad at all if all of the mages are on a similar gear level with similar weapons. On any fight. On single target it's better, on cleave it's better. Barrage does more damage by the time combustion comes off cooldown. Hits more targets as well. You can check my logs from the first three bosses in Throne of Thunder in the Arcane thread.

[brirrspliff]

pretty "ok" guide, nub. ;-)

[Deleted]

Yea so, Arcane is utter shit.
Last week's Tayak I had something over 90k dps. Tonight it was ~64k. A monk 7ilvl lower than me (I'm 490) had 63k. An undergeared hybrid... so much fun idd...

Tomorrow I'm gonna try the FFB-weaving. Just toyed around with it on dummies and it looked as a pretty solid 5-10k increase compared to the "by design" ABring once 4 charges are up and no AM procs are left.
The playstyle is so fucking shit now it's unbearable. Painful mana issues, lots of the times getting zero AM procs when reaching 4 charges. Literally nothing to cast while moving. It's so tedious... I think they should have given Arcane some new spell or something that would replace the Scorch if they really had to take it out or just tweak the numbers around the Scorch weaving actually. What we have now is a bad joke at best.

I also had Fire set prepared for testing (30% crit) and it ended as the fat lonely ugly kid in the corner that I'm not touching any time soon again. The 49k dps on Feng was seriously weak. Say what you will, but going without crits for 30 seconds did happen right there and I'm sure as hell not enjoying that casino spec one bit.
The fact that I'm bad at it doesn't help either.

Frost fared best for me... 70-90k sustained. Again depending a lot on procs though... having to Alter Time with just 1 FoF + MF sucks big time).
But damn the spec gets boring real fast. Taking Freeze outta the picture ruined it.

I ment to provide some WoLs, but the recording got borked somehow
Hmh, all things considered I don't seem to be enjoying either of the three specs right now

You could always consider to go frost/haste arcane.
Im also 490 but I did had quite some more dps as arcane on the first boss killl. (84-93k DPS 10 Man)

I quess it falls behind on higher Items levels but I was actually suprised by the dps I still had as arcane tonight.

Logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/8a3kzmiahujim41b/

[zomgDPS]

And now weighing in, Blizz themselves with their own review of Mages in 5.2:

We set out to accomplish a few goals with Mages:

* Despite various adjustments along the way, Frost Mages are still too powerful in PvP and not quite competitive in PvE.

* Our changes to Arcane in patch 5.1 overshot the mark and also needed some changes.

* While we wanted to make some less attractive talents more attractive, we also weren’t satisfied with the Mage talent tree.

There are a few changes to Frost in PvP. First, the PvP set bonus only lowers the cooldown of Counterspell when it is successfully used as an interrupt, not as a silence. As we’ve said before, we think silences are too dominant in PvP, but we don’t think patch 5.2 is the right time to remove them all because we can’t also remove all of the instant heals in PvP. We like the Counterspell change because it rewards skilled play. We also made a change to the way Ring of Frost works with Presence of Mind. Rather than making the Ring of Frost instantly apply, the PoM only makes the cast time instant—the Ring still needs to arm for two seconds before freezing the unfortunates standing on it. Most significantly, we redesigned the Glyph of Fireblast to no longer allow it to detonate Frost Bomb on demand; instead it will require some timing on the part of the player. We’re boosting Frost’s PvE performance via Frostbolt, which requires a spell cast (which means the Mage must stand still and risks Frost lock), and also has a stacking debuff to really maximize damage.

We had two problems we wanted to solve with Arcane. The first was that Scorch was never intended to be rotational for Arcane to avoid having to dump stacks of Arcane Charges. Arcane is intended to build up charges but then dump them when the mana drain gets too high, but Scorch allowed Arcane Mages to avoid that cycle, which inflated their damage as a consequence. However, we also wanted to tweak a previous change where we increased Arcane Charges up to a max stack of 6. Dumping a stack of 6 is painful because it takes a long time to build it back up again, so in 5.2 we are lowering the stack size to 4.

Scorch was a big design problem for us for other reasons. It feels really good to have something to cast while moving, even if it’s a DPS loss overall. Many mages were taking Scorch for reasons beyond the Arcane Charge stacking issue above. At the same time, the talent tree also suffered a problem where Blazing Speed couldn’t compete with Temporal Shield or Ice Barrier. We had hoped to position Blazing Speed as a defensive ability, but really it’s a mobility talent, and we think it makes more sense alongside Presence of Mind and Ice Floes, which also offer mobility in one way or another. Instead of replacing Blazing Speed with Scorch, we just gave Scorch to Fire mages, which also helps differentiate the specs a bit more. Instead, now Mages have a new talent, Flameglow, which is a passive defensive option that absorbs some damage from each hit, and fits in thematically alongside Temporal Shield and Ice Barrier.

Sauce.


My take? It is extremely void of any real insight. It feels they are just listing the changes they made with not much in terms of having any real window into what they were thinking.


Imho, it is a dud review. Mine is better.


You hear that Blizz? I'm better than you!!

[Skidd]

I think the very first sentence sums it up pretty much for the mage class right now and what blizzard thinks our issues are:
"There are a few changes to Frost in PvP"

I think I should start PVP on my mage, we seem to be OP there otherwise blizzard wouldn't be looking into the "issues" and the QQ from the community about frost mage OP. Reroll something else like a hunter or warlock for PVE purposes.

Also no mention on why they thought they needed to change Pyro blast damage and still nothing on addressing L90 talents. I feel like an abused step child all bruised and beaten shivering in a dark corner and blizzard brings this BS out. If they at least acknowledged the communities concerns in some form or fashion and then said we are looking into it I would have been happy but this is just another slap in the face.

[bcc]

What a shitty review. So, in blizzards internal testing, they never intended for Arcane to be so good. HOWEVER, AFFLICTION was still better than Arcane even with us 'exploiting' the Scorch weaving.

No word on their thoughts about the Fire spec. Are they really happy with us having completely garbage instant AOE abilities, or the fact that we are SLIGHTLY above average at BEST on single target situations?

Where is the fucking justice...

[Deleted]

The review is a joke! Too much bla bla about PvP, really nothing serious about PvE, prefer your review Zomg : ) I expect a hotfix for mages and hopefully a solution for the frostbolt debuff.



So I got my shots last night on the first 6 (stuck at Ji-Kun for hardmode testing). I played frost while my fellow mages played fire.

Jin'rokh: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...e/?s=468&e=646

Well, this is an okay fight for mage (frost). 214k DPS looks pretty decent, but we have to wait and see what happens in heroic modes.

Horridon: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=2077&e=2599

I (we) played Horridon as intended. I switched to adds and only nuked boss if adds were down. I just hate the Frostbolt debuff. Big advantage for Locks/Booms/Priests

Council: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=4730&e=5100

Played that as inteded, too. No chance vs Locks/Booms/Priests. Again, hate Frostbolt debuff!


Tortos: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=6049&e=6344

Now my personal nightmare arrived! I could do a little bit better on tortos, but I have a special job on that fight, which is a dps decrease.


Megaera:

Hope that log will be uploaded soon. One thing really annoys me on that fight is the §!/$@%"! Frozen Orb bug. It is flying away from the boss, tried to release the orb parallel to the heads, but it is not working properly. I fu***d up my cooldown management as well, because I thought its a good idea @ 65% life of a head to delay second AT (not!) and did around 120k dps overall.

Ji-Kun:

Can´t say at the moment. Still need to find our proper heroic strat.

[Akraen]

Ji-Kun made me want to slit my wrists :P

We need a better strategy than a 4 group strat, haha

[Deleted]

Yeah, that will be really fun on heroic. Playing the encounter normale mode with an imagined 2 min feather debuff is meh :P

[s315h1n]

We did some TES after wiping on horridon half the night. Protectors where I stand still 90% of the fight I came out #1 dps as arcane by a few percent, not a huge lead at all. Tsulong I was third. You can feel the pain of moving. It's painful going two or more blast orations without a single missile proc.

Arcane feels better on Horridon too. I feel like fire isn't getting full benefit on mobs that die fast, and building even a slightly good combustion to spread feels impossible. I still feel like I'm holding the group back, especially on aoe.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7...?s=7502&e=7899

[Decimation2g]

The roller coaster ride that is Mages since the end of Cata. The rng is def obvious, as fire I was around 80k on some pulls and near 105k on other pulls. Looking forward to more gear and more consistent dmg.

[Xzan]

There are a few changes to Frost in PvP. First, the PvP set bonus only lowers the cooldown of Counterspell when it is successfully used as an interrupt, not as a silence.

/care
we still have to use the silence after DF if going for a switch kill on the healer. Might as well take CS glyph and still wouldn't care one bit about it's cooldown as it would still line up with DF cooldown.

We also made a change to the way Ring of Frost works with Presence of Mind. Rather than making the Ring of Frost instantly apply, the PoM only makes the cast time instant—the Ring still needs to arm for two seconds before freezing the unfortunates standing on it.

We already had to get our targets Frost Nova'd before Ringing them first in some cases anyways. I've had people casually walking over my RoF without getting caught in it so often I lost count...
It was stupid when PoM triple Ring worked though.

Most significantly, we redesigned the Glyph of Fireblast to no longer allow it to detonate Frost Bomb on demand; instead it will require some timing on the part of the player.

Flashnews - nobody used the glyph in PvP ever since it reduced the Bomb's damage! Just admit you were looking for an excuse to take spreading Living Bomb away from us.

We’re boosting Frost’s PvE performance via Frostbolt, which requires a spell cast (which means the Mage must stand still and risks Frost lock), and also has a stacking debuff to really maximize damage.

Which still is only bandaid to Frost's scaling issues...

Scorch was a big design problem for us for other reasons. It feels really good to have something to cast while moving, even if it’s a DPS loss overall.

This is such rubbish! Can't locks cast everything they want while moving? How about hunters? What kind of quasi-argument is this? You ain't fooling anybody!

Arcane is intended to build up charges but then dump them when the mana drain gets too high, but Scorch allowed Arcane Mages to avoid that cycle, which inflated their damage as a consequence.

How about you take notes on how do we play it and stop forcing your shitty design on us? Has it ever crossed your mind that maybe your intented design sucks?

However, we also wanted to tweak a previous change where we increased Arcane Charges up to a max stack of 6. Dumping a stack of 6 is painful because it takes a long time to build it back up again, so in 5.2 we are lowering the stack size to 4

No. What's really painful is going to 4 Arcane Charges and having no AM procs to utilize them.