6.0 Mage Speculation & Paranoia

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Celestalon was referring to the point that WWs won't have to self heal using a ground target spell. It still makes sense for ours, due to a want for control in placement. They're generally just healing themselves, and that can be accomplished via an instant cast self heal.

[Deleted]

Intellect, Armours and Refreshment sound like fairly unlikely spells to lose as they said they're mostly focusing on abilities that players need to have keybound. Ones you cast once after dying don't really count.
Frost Nova too seems a little too iconic to get rid of. It's a pretty quintessential spell.

Mana Gem I can see removed not because it takes up keys but because it's to be honest fairly useless in general and I doubt they'd make it into a raid thing like Warlock healthstones (mana's apparently intended to be so useful to healers that it'd be hard to justify not bringing the class with free mana potions, and so useless to everyone else that it would be an odd spell).

Was about to post the same, blizzard has mentioned it several times their not too concerned about spells that you cast outside of combat.

Flamestrike and fireblast could be removed, Cone of cold I have a bit of difficulty with (fond pvp and solo memories). I do think that Dragon's breath could replace Cone of cold for fire spec. Ice lance could be removed from Fire and arcane, although pvpers really like that spell to counter DK's and warriors.

If they finally make arcane more involved in manamanagement (spells that generate mana) than mana gem could be removed for all specs. Alternatively you could have mana gem serve a diffrent function for frost and fire which turns it into a cooldown usage. Hmm i had some old notes on that:

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---------------------------------- Fire Crystal ----------------------------------
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Fire crystal is a new spell only available to Firemages, this spell replaces Mana gem and is learned at an early level.

Conjure Fire Crystal:
Conjures a Fire Crystal that can be used to set your critchance to 35% for a duration of 12 seconds. Fire Crystal can only stack with criticalchance buffs and not with passives or critrating.

Fire Crystal has a 40sec cooldown per use and holds 9 charges.

Alternative:
Conjure Fire Ruby:
Conjures a Fire Ruby that can be used to set your critchance to 45% for a duration of 12 seconds. Fire Crystal can only stack with criticalchance buff that have a short duration.

Fire Ruby has a 40sec cooldown per use and holds 9charges.


Glyph of Fire Crystal:
Changes the effect to instead increase your base critchancee, critrating and cooldown by 100%. It does not increase your racial bonus or buffs with a duration.


What is the goal of Fire Crystal
The goal is quite obvious, a big problem with fire is that while you are levelling or gearing up, Fire is really bad and you won’t be able to experience the awesomeness that is Fire. Fire crystal should help the under geared players. But in order to make it valuable for better geared players, they will be using the glyph.
The goal of this glyph is to prevent Critrating becoming a low value for Fire spec. It could also be that Fire Crystal could replace Critical Mass entirely or that Critical Mass becomes a flat increase that will also be doubled by the Glyphed version of Fire Crystal.

[Polarthief]

It's called sturdiness not steadiness. Someone made the same mistake on the pally forum too although it looks like he copied your format. Anyway, just thought I'd let you know so you could correct it.

Thank you, and I typed that while watching the virtual stream of Blizzcon, and I do recall them having a slide that said "Steadiness". Someone was probably not paying attention when they typed that up! I will fix it though.

"Mana adept has never really worked properly" is a popular way to say "We don't play around it enough." I agree that we need more spells to use Mana Adept as it should be at the center of our gameplay. But it definitely worked from the very first moment it was introduced and it worked quite well.

The problem is more or less to not make players' best DPS being staying around 80%+ mana. Removing Rune of Power would be a good start because then we'd be back to the Cataclysm design of burn-conserve, which is at least better than the mess we have now.

I'm thinking the following spells will be removed: Mana Gem, Fire Blast (Inferno will become Fire-only), Armor spells (removed and their bonuses integrated somewhere else).

Oh and I agree with citrique that Brilliance will probably become a passive aura.

Armor spells can become passive based on spec since it's almost like that anyways. Frost uses MaArmor only if you're a full Mastery build (not something most do) though Arcane uses FrArmor IIRC. It's been awhile since I bothered with Arcane, seeing as how I don't play atm

The problem I have with buffs going passive though is two things: First, when people go out of range, you no longer have the buffs from each other (think Ji-Kun), and second being if they die, you also lose the buffs. Now if they could make the buffs be raidwide and fully active before and after death and no matter how far the players are apart from one another (even if they're on different planes of existence like Yogg-Saron), then I'd be all for not having active buffs exist anymore, but we all know those changes won't come.

https://twitter.com/Celestalon/statu...55996791099393
I hope it refers to Mages too (RoP-like Meteor and Crystal), although the twit was about WW Monks and their Healing Spheres

Who else remembers when then "removed" Welly Freeze from our rotation because ground circles? Who else remembers that they kept Rune of Ground-Targeting unchanged (mechanically) in the same patch?

I have a feeling they won't bother.



Anyway, as far as abilities that are on the chopping block, here's my thoughts:
- Mana Gem (made Arcane only/it just becomes a 2m cooldown to refresh some mana)
- Flamestrike (it's really not needed)
- Conjure Refreshment (tables are better)
- Fire Blast (Fire may or may not keep IBlast only because they may modify the spec to where it doesn't need it)
- Mage Bombs (Fire may or may not keep LB)
- L90 talents (pretty much a given... hopefully, and replaced with something else)
- Armor Spells (made passive)
- Arcane Brilliance (made passive)

[Deleted]

On a german magazine was an interview with Ion Hazzikostas where he mentioned that the mage bombs could be fused into one talent, which gives each specc the corresponding bomb, and two new talents will be added to the tier.

[Libretto]

On a german magazine was an interview with Ion Hazzikostas where he mentioned that the mage bombs could be fused into one talent, which gives each specc the corresponding bomb, and two new talents will be added to the tier.

That would be amazing, as I want bombs to stay for AOE farming and various multidot fights.

[Alexand3r]

On a german magazine was an interview with Ion Hazzikostas where he mentioned that the mage bombs could be fused into one talent, which gives each specc the corresponding bomb, and two new talents will be added to the tier.

I hope they do that. It would make that tier much more interesting.

[Imnick]

It's mentioned on the front page of WoW insider right now too.

Full quote; "Level 100 talents are being designed around the idea that one talent can/should be different things to different specs, and this philosophy is being used in redesigning other talent tiers as well. He uses the example of the mage level 75 tier and says they've discussed taking all three of the current talents and making it one talent, which gives you one of the three spells (Nether Tempest, Living Bomb or Frost Bomb) based on spec."

Not really relevant to mages but they also bizarrely implied that rather than the semi-expected "Team up with Ner'Zhul and fight Gul'Dan" we might be doing the opposite...

[Obelisk Kai]

I hope they do that. It would make that tier much more interesting.

Agreed. It turns adding a dot to your rotation from a necessity into an actual choice. If this is true, this is an exciting development for our level 75 tier.

However, would they alter frost bomb so it would become a dot spell (and therefore make the choice consisten across the specs) or would the three spells remain behaving as they are to promote spec identity. Seems like a lot of fun can now be had with that one little talent.

This, for me, is a GIGANTIC step in the right direction and if confirmed is really positive news.. Getting really excited now.

Also, tier 75 spells. They are dots that form part of our rotation and do cleave/aoe damage.

Mad speculation, bound to be proved wrong, but what if falling stars is moved up into one of the empty slots? You know, it fulfils the same function except this time it would be cast time spell that does aoe/cleave damage.
And maybe for a passive, something that buffs Ice Lance/FoF dmg, spreading our fire dots and arcane barrage cleave?

[voltaa]

Agreed. It turns adding a dot to your rotation from a necessity into an actual choice.

"Choice" but as long as they don't make stupid conditions like these anymore then I think this is a pretty cool step forward, I was skeptical about the loss of multidot and what it meant for that tier of talents but if they end up making bomb in general a choice and two other rotational abilities tossed in I'm on board.

[Grimes7]

Anyway, as far as abilities that are on the chopping block, here's my thoughts:
- Mana Gem (made Arcane only/it just becomes a 2m cooldown to refresh some mana)
- Flamestrike (it's really not needed)
- Conjure Refreshment (tables are better)
- Fire Blast (Fire may or may not keep IBlast only because they may modify the spec to where it doesn't need it)
- Mage Bombs (Fire may or may not keep LB)
- L90 talents (pretty much a given... hopefully, and replaced with something else)
- Armor Spells (made passive)
- Arcane Brilliance (made passive)

They can take that stupid "Teleport/Portal: Tol Barad" as well. I can honestly say that I've never used that ever... even when it was current/relevant content.

[Imnick]

They aren't going to remove any portals.
Guys how often are we going to have to repeat this?

They are mainly changing and removing spells you might keybind, because removing spells you aren't keybinding doesn't actually save anyone any bar space.
Portals are in their own pull-out box for crying out loud! They could add twelve more and not increase button bloat at all!

That means:

Not buffs, not portals, not out-of-combat utility.

[Grimes7]

They aren't going to remove any portals.
Guys how often are we going to have to repeat this?

It was a joke. Should have put a "LOL" there though. Figured the sarcasm was evident.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Who else remembers when then "removed" Welly Freeze from our rotation because ground circles? Who else remembers that they kept Rune of Ground-Targeting unchanged (mechanically) in the same patch?

I have a feeling they won't bother.

One's rotational, and one's in theory optional, even though arc didn't really work without it.

It was a joke. Should have put a "LOL" there though. Figured the sarcasm was evident.

Throw it in your portal roulette. A fair number of non-mages aren't aware we can port to there, from what I've had as reactions.

[Polarthief]

They are mainly changing and removing spells you might keybind, because removing spells you aren't keybinding doesn't actually save anyone any bar space.

That means:

Not buffs, not portals, not out-of-combat utility.

- Countless buffs and other pre-combat things have been removed, such as having totems, auras, buffs, and other things, or turned into passives/toggleables from the UI.
- Eyes of the Beast (Hunters) had no real in-combat practicality. It was purely fun and a lot of Hunters loved it. It was removed, yet things like Far Sight and Hawk Eye remain.
- Blast Wave was removed and melded into Flamestrike, yet it was incredibly useful and many Mages (myself included) miss it greatly.
- Mana Shield was removed and transformed into IW, without the knockback component that made it, well, interesting.
- FFB at this point should be removed because it serves zero purpose other than Brain Freeze procs, low-level Mages (which can easily be changed with Frostbolt/Fireball like it USED to be anyways), and really, really, fresh new players who choose to use FFB over Fireball via Glyph.

I'm just saying.

One's rotational, and one's in theory optional, even though arc didn't really work without it.

Except we STILL cast it on bosses with freezable targets, because free FoF. Plain and simple, they fucked up. They could just give us a 24s cooldown that generates 2 FoF charges and untie it completely from Freeze.

[Imnick]

You're talking about changes from MoP, they have already said that they were misguided in their attempts last time and this time around are doing things differently.
If how they did it last time solved the button bloat they wouldn't still be fixing it now would they?


Your information is out of date.
Eyes of the Beast is something they mentioned themselves as a spell that was pointless for them to have removed as it did not take up keybinding space, and that doing so was a mistake.

[Kapadons]

You're talking about changes from MoP, they have already said that they were misguided in their attempts last time and this time around are doing things differently.
If how they did it last time solved the button bloat they wouldn't still be fixing it now would they?


Your information is out of date.
Eyes of the Beast is something they mentioned themselves as a spell that was pointless for them to have removed as it did not take up keybinding space, and that doing so was a mistake.

Why are mages even on the list for button bloat. Of the 4 toons I raid with in some capacity they have the least amount of buttons to have keybound.

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Throw it in your portal roulette. A fair number of non-mages aren't aware we can port to there, from what I've had as reactions.

You might as well just make a portal to Dalaran Crater and call it good. That's where I get sent every time I decide to play your little game.

- - - Updated - - -

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Except we STILL cast it on bosses with freezable targets, because free FoF. Plain and simple, they fucked up. They could just give us a 24s cooldown that generates 2 FoF charges and untie it completely from Freeze.

I cast it on the MC's on Heroic Garrosh. 2 free FoF procs every MC

[Mastamage]

Why are mages even on the list for button bloat. Of the 4 toons I raid with in some capacity they have the least amount of buttons to have keybound.

We'll just be pruned less than other classes.

You might as well just make a portal to Dalaran Crater and call it good. That's where I get sent every time I decide to play your little game.

I kill at least 10 per week w/ Old Dalaran ports. Very enjoyable and satisfying.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

You might as well just make a portal to Dalaran Crater and call it good. That's where I get sent every time I decide to play your little game.

Yeah but you're a mage, you have literally 3 built in methods to escape it. Just you wait, just you wait...

Anyway I mean again, if you discount talents, 20% means frost loses ~4 buttons. Fire blast, AE, flamestrike, MI. Even if MI goes talented, we're also not likely to be required to bind evocation anymore given the L90s are being changed. I'm almost entirely sure we're on the low end of pruning as well. I doubt there's much to worry about.

[Kapadons]

Yeah but you're a mage, you have literally 3 built in methods to escape it. Just you wait, just you wait...

I usually hit the goblin glider and see how many times I can make it around the crater before landing.

[Sunblaze]

An easy, but boring solution would be to just make every third Fireball grant a Heating Up charge (independent of fireball crits) and Inferno Blast be a guaranteed Charge. 2 charges grant instant Pyro with an increased chance to Crit. This way all three secondary stats carry some weight and the spec stops being random. Just a thought.

A bit of work around this, would be how it worked during cataclysm. Not a charge every X fireballs. But a chance of a Pyro! proc at every fireball crit. (This time would be a chance of heating up on a non-crit). I played fire on cataclysm (yea i know OMG COMBUSTION). Even being crit relying, it was more fun than it is now. I like some things now (like inferno blast), and i dislike others (relying on inferno blast or 2x crits).

On regards of mage's "tools". I hope they dont remove our tools. Thats what makes mages fun. If it werent for that, we should just switch to warlocks. Mages are kinda simple to play, but have an arsenal of tools that can be used to improve performance/survivability/damage in some cases.