*5.3 Mage Discussion*

[Swizzle]

Saving a thread for the innevitable discussion for when the patch notes are released. I'll post the notes here when they're ready. so far, here's what we have:

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Arcane Brilliance had its mana cost reduced to 1%, down from 4%.
  
• Dalaran Brilliance had its mana cost reduced to 1%, down from 4%.

[Deleted]

What made them lower the mana cost anyways?

[Elegiac]

What made them lower the mana cost anyways?

Trying to make rebuffing less punitive, probably.

I will bet good money that eventually they will just become auras like many of the Shaman totem buffs.

[Babylonia]

What made them lower the mana cost anyways?

Less of a penalty for rebuffs upon battle rez...especially for arcane?

[bowchikabow]

tbh, I think there are some more important QoL changes that could be made. But hey, that's just my opinion.

[Wobe]

Mages are going to have to be given some type of utility in the future or we're going to be alot less useful than the other caster classes, as we were this tier. i.e. Shadow Priest brings Vampiric Embrace, Druid brings Tranquility, Warlock brings EVERYTHING. Mages have average damage, below average survivability, and no raid utility that can't be given by other, more useful classes. If we aren't going to be given some type of raid utility then yes, our damage should be buffed to be much higher than other caster classes.

A simple idea is to give mages different auras, something like Paladins. They could be something like:

- Brilliance Aura: When Brilliance Aura is active x% of the damage done by the mage will be converted into mana for the lowest 5 raid members.

- Focus Aura: Passive: Reduces all dmg taken by the mage by 5%
Active: When Focus Aura is active the mage will focus all of his power being unable to move or act, but reducing dmg taken by the raid by 20% for 8 seconds. 5min cd.

****And then some type of damage aura, giving the mage a passive dmg increase and the raid some type of increase upon a certain event****

This is a quick fix, but a fix nonetheless. It's obvious the mage class needs a complete overhaul. My main concern with mage really isnt our damage, because with good play and rng, we are able to be among the top 2-3 classes, but when you consider that those other 2-3 classes bring a good amount of raid utility, it makes us useless in most cases.

[Shangalar]

@NmezusBL - what you listed there is everything *except* a quick fix

unless you were referring to the Brilliance mana cost reduction, in which case I apologize for misunderstanding.

[nimryas]

I do feel like mages could use some kind of new spell/passive talent to bring more utility to the raids. All we do now is damage and basicly nothing more, of course in pvp situations we bring alot of control, but in PVE controlling adds has been homogenized so that we're not particularly better in controlling adds (unless frost) then any other class really.

I'm not sure how one could solve this with an easy passive talent, I think the ideas posted by NmezusBL are a bit too complex and would require more time to develop. It would be fun to see that our bombs would also heal raid members with lowest %hp for 50% of the dmg that that specific bomb has done, 50% is just a nummber i randomly choose :P But I'm not completely sure if it would be worthwhile to actuallly have. Or other changes to already excisting spells/talents.

[Elegiac]

I do feel like mages could use some kind of new spell/passive talent to bring more utility to the raids. All we do now is damage and basicly nothing more, of course in pvp situations we bring alot of control, but in PVE controlling adds has been homogenized so that we're not particularly better in controlling adds (unless frost) then any other class really.

I'm not sure how one could solve this with an easy passive talent, I think the ideas posted by NmezusBL are a bit too complex and would require more time to develop. It would be fun to see that our bombs would also heal raid members with lowest %hp for 50% of the dmg that that specific bomb has done, 50% is just a nummber i randomly choose :P But I'm not completely sure if it would be worthwhile to actuallly have. Or other changes to already excisting spells/talents.

Honestly, I think Nmezus' is on the right track with the Brilliance Aura thing. It's a useful cooldown in the vein of Mana Tide Totem, has precedents in Warcraft lore, and isn't something found in a lot of other classes.

[Wobe]

@NmezusBL - what you listed there is everything *except* a quick fix

unless you were referring to the Brilliance mana cost reduction, in which case I apologize for misunderstanding.

These are a quick fix actually, look how quickly the Flameglow talent was put into the game. Things like this are super easy to code because they already have similiar spell's in game that do the same thing. This would be completely viable to have in time for 5.3.

[Shangalar]

Flameglow is a very weak defensive passive spell and doesn't have to be seriously balanced with everything in the game. What you list does. Don't get me wrong, your ideas are great and as Didactic said, they're on the right track of what we need, but I find it very difficult to believe that something like this would be allowed in the middle of an expansion.

You can argue that they implemented the monk Ring of Peace thing, but that needs to be balanced only for PvP and I'm not really sure that they succeeded considering how powerful the spell is. Auras and cooldowns you offer need to be balanced both for PvE and PvP and raid encounters are tuned based on potential dps/healing which includes powerful offensive and defensive cooldowns.

We'll see. I like them, I just can't see them before 6.0.

[wrathblade]

id prefer if the removed all 3 level 90 mage talents and gave us something differend!
it beeing a dps CD or a new spell we have to put into our rotation. but atm the flat you do 15% more dmg after a evocation or when standing in that spot feels really odd....

give something like flame orb , raw energy ( channel dps spell that gives a buff to the next spell beeing cast? ) and something like a controle talent.

basicly it would be a aoe move. a single target dps increase or a controle talent thats more usefull for fire then frost spec. els ppl will whine frost is OP again:P
still wondering why blizzard removed flame orb tho i love my frost orb on my frost mage!

[mrgreenthump]

Raid wide Temporal Shield gogo!

[Swizzle]

Aaaaaaaand, I forgot to lock this after making it. Locking till the full notes are out in order to reduce speculation and promote discussion on actual changes,