6.0 Mage Speculation & Paranoia

[Akraen]

Are you asking whether you'd take someone in their offspec over someone playing in their main spec? The answer there is kind of obvious...

The idea is not to make specs completely interchangeable no

Problem is historically the answer has almost always been bring the fire mage.

[Imnick]

That's a problem with how well the specs have been tuned this expansion, not the intended gear system for the next expansion
Although bringing a player playing their offspec over someone playing their main spec because the offspec spec is just better is probably something they should tune to avoid anyway!

[Akraen]

They've done a pretty good job this patch, but the major overarching issue going forward into WoD is we still have a pures issue. Once a best is determined it's hard to avoid it. The only way spec defenders of the other 2 get by is either through denial or by keeping the performance lines as gray as possible and hope it's never determined which spec is currently best.

I've been focusing on the latter method of pushing for frost this patch and it's working well. I know fire's ahead in potential, just relying on it never pulling so far ahead that it becomes a standard again. Though I'm already ilvl 575 and frost is still doing so well that I think we're good for the rest of the expansion.

I would like that if they can't solve our pure-DPS problems, they at least keep WoD as it is now. If they don't, I just assume not raid anymore.

[Polarthief]

I'd be sad to see IW gone though! Yeah it needs to be untied from mana, as do all three, but take damage > do more damage has always been a fun mechanic for me. Doing that when it was an Arcane talent was a high point of ICC!
Also really not sure why you want RoP to be Arcane exclusive when it could just be a choice for all three specs...

Yeah, it was a fun mechanic when IA was a talent and OPTIONAL bonuses, but you'll still perform well without it. It's NOT fun when it's MANDATORY and not taking damage will significantly nerf you, passively.

Night-and-Day differences between IA and IW.

They've done a pretty good job this patch, but the major overarching issue going forward into WoD is we still have a pures issue.

More than just that, we have a class (Warlock) that does what we basically do, but because they simply bring Healthstones and Gateway, on top of taking less damage overall with nice defensive cooldowns/passives, they'll simply be chosen/more wanted over us.

There needs to be a clear and distinct difference between pures. Mages have suffered the above for this entire expansion. While our DPS has been at a pretty high point (with the exception of beginning of ToT), Warlocks have been too and simply get chosen because they do what we do, but better.

[Fim]

From the sounds of some old tweets, the first one, GC has stated he liked when someone was a Insert Spec Insert Class

I remember that tweet - its worrying though. If the devs like people being able to stay in one spec for all the fights, then they've little alternative to give all the specs the same tools - this is why we have mana management talents as Fire/Frost, bombs as Frost/Arcane and spec specific survival talents like Cold Snap and Cauterize are now shared. This is just homogenization though.

[Pyromelter]

Problem is historically the answer has almost always been bring the fire mage.

Since wrath, the answer historically has been "bring the arcane or fire mage, whichever is more boss this tier." And that has really see-sawed quite a bit, with arcane being better for longer in wrath, fire and arcane reaching about parity in cata, and fire being generally better for longer in mop, with more parity at the end, although arcane is way, way, way less fun now than it was in the past 2 xpacs.

And polar makes a good point. Far too often over the past 3 xpacs it's been "screw the mages, bring more locks." The only time it was mage > lock was one specific fight in Dragon Soul (spine), and filling one very tiny niche over locks filling every other niche is kinda crappy.

[mrgreenthump]

Since wrath, the answer historically has been "bring the arcane or fire mage, whichever is more boss this tier." And that has really see-sawed quite a bit.

Weren't it more like "bring Fire or Arcane, based on which weren't nerfed and underpowered that patch". For a really long time we needed to FotM pick specs to not be at the bottom-middle of the pack when it came to dps..

[huth]

Although middle of the pack is where everybody should be if the game was perfectly balanced.

[Akraen]

Although middle of the pack is where everybody should be if the game was perfectly balanced.

People say this a lot but logically that's one of the dumbest statements.

Not everyone can be middle. It's the max minus the min that you want to constantly decrease.

If top spec is only 0.5% dps higher than the bottom spec that'd be amazing. And in MoP they've gotten closer to this than ever.

[mrgreenthump]

Although middle of the pack is where everybody should be if the game was perfectly balanced.

Well now it's somewhat acceptable, but before when classes were off by like 20% between lowest and strongest class and Mages brought nothing but Focus magic on 1 character pretty much, why would you bring a mage when other ranged were really really strong at the same time compared to mages.

[huth]

People say this a lot but logically that's one of the dumbest statements.

You forgot the last part of the statement. Everybody should be there in the theoretical perfect state(which isn't realistically achievable).

[Polarthief]

And polar makes a good point. Far too often over the past 3 xpacs it's been "screw the mages, bring more locks." The only time it was mage > lock was one specific fight in Dragon Soul (spine), and filling one very tiny niche over locks filling every other niche is kinda crappy.

It's been primarily in MoP though; I don't remember it being too much of a problem in Cata/LK like it is today (and to anyone who went through serious progression this entire expansion, you know fully aware what I'm talking of)

Hell, besides the first two weeks of ToT, the only time Mages weren't good at ALL was Sunwell, and let's be honest, there were a LOT of specs that were still complete garbage then, so I'll give that the BOTD (plus I wasn't raiding relevant content until Lich King >.>)

Weren't it more like "bring Fire or Arcane, based on which weren't nerfed and underpowered that patch". For a really long time we needed to FotM pick specs to not be at the bottom-middle of the pack when it came to dps..

We have always since they nerfed Fire in 5.1.

Launch - 5.1 Hotfixes: Fire
5.1- Geared in 5.2: Arcane
Geared in 5.2-5.4: Fire
Geared in 5.4 (Live): Any Spec
Not geared in 5.4 (Live): Pretty much limited to Frost

Although middle of the pack is where everybody should be if the game was perfectly balanced.

Then we would never be brought though because we provide NOTHING and take more damage than Warlocks. You'd basically be a stupid guild to ever bring in the light blue guys when you could bring more Priests, Warlocks, Shamans, and Druids, all of which take less damage than we do and provide (very powerful) raid utility. The ONLY raid-wide utility we have is Crit (being fairly rare outside of Mages, though any Hunter can bring it...) and Time Warp, though any Shaman nullifies that too.

Well now it's somewhat acceptable

It's not acceptable by any means for a class with no utility (see response above your quote)

[huth]

The ONLY raid-wide utility we have is Crit (being fairly rare outside of Mages, though any Hunter can bring it...) and Time Warp, though any Shaman nullifies that too.

You could get a similar complaint from a shaman. And i've yet to see a shaman that can blink through the room to get to whatever that is that needs somebody doing something with it right now. Utility is more than just raid buffs.

[Polarthief]

You could get a similar complaint from a shaman. And i've yet to see a shaman that can blink through the room to get to whatever that is that needs somebody doing something with it right now. Utility is more than just raid buffs.

Oh I'm aware, but (at least in my guild) I saw plenty of our Shamans being able to top meters.

It comes down mostly to who plays well and what fight it is, but raid utility will make up a big part of who's chosen if DPS is on equal grounds.

[mrgreenthump]

It's not acceptable by any means for a class with no utility (see response above your quote)

I meant it's acceptable in their design goals as they are trying to keep all the specs of all classes inside ~3-5% or less.

[LocNess]

I meant it's acceptable in their design goals as they are trying to keep all the specs of all classes inside ~3-5% or less.

Eh, as long as Mages get some reason for being there if our damage is not going to be over 5% from the lowest. I think raid utility can be worth a lot more than 5% dps increase.

If I have two choices:

Shadow Priest pulling 200k, but has tons of off healing ability

Mage pulling 210k. Not much it brings besides time warp (which are covered by shaman).

I would rather bring the Shadow Priest.

I wouldnt probably consider the Mage till the Mage is 40-50k dps above the S priest.

[Kagecamia]

If the issue is that mages don't have enough utility, perhaps it is high time to make use of those people that talked with the devs that voltaa mentioned earlier. Voice your concerns that mages don't bring enough raid utility. Offer some suggestions.

I'd like to see a form of mana orbs like the monk's healing orbs that they produce through their general rotation. Maybe add some sort of passive that you have a chance of summoning a mana orb from your damaging spells. Run through it and you get instantly 5% to 10% of your mana. Not game breaking and can be adjusted as it sees fit.

I think someone mentioned awhile back to make rune of power give back mana to healers that stand in it. However put a cap on like 2 to 3 people (including the mage).

I wouldn't worry about the fact that locks are overpowered and bring too much utility for too long. One of devs stated that they are going to nerf locks again and make some more changes to the class (ie. a mini revamp.../rolls eyes). But hey that's fine, I've moved on to tanking. Just think that utility should be partially unique and available for all classes in one way or another.

[Vedel]

We have raid utility it is called mob control but Blizzard never lets us use it. Three mages can keep a pack of mobs rooted in one place indefinitely we do it on the Immerseus achievement every week. We use to be able to Ring of Frost adds so we never even had to dps them down (H Lei Shi or H Will of the Emperors pre-RoF nerf). But most mobs in raids are now immune to freeze, nova, and Ring of Frost. The best part of Challenges mode for me, is that I get to bring out our entire toolkit. The majority of which rots on my bars never getting used in raids. How often do you cast slow as an arcane mage? How often do you use Polymorph? How often do you use Dragon's Breath to disorient a groups of adds for a few seconds before they murder your group? How often do you cast Remove Curse? Or for goodness sake's what happened to using slow fall on raid members? Or How about using spellsteal? What happened to shatter combos on groups of mobs? (Enjoy trying to remember that list of mobs in the raid that you can freeze) That is our utility let us use it.

If Blizzard decides to add utility give us a raid wide mana cooldown. You could even replace our level 90 talents with it. Turn Rune of Power into a raid wide mana rune with a 2 minute cooldown. Make it so when Incanter's Ward breaks all raid members in 30 yards recieve X% of their mana back. Invocation would probably need to be changed can't think of way to make that raid wide.

[Steve the Sloth]

We have raid utility it is called mob control but Blizzard never lets us use it. Three mages can keep a pack of mobs rooted in one place indefinitely we do it on the Immerseus achievement every week. We use to be able to Ring of Frost adds so we never even had to dps them down (H Lei Shi or H Will of the Emperors pre-RoF nerf). But most mobs in raids are now immune to freeze, nova, and Ring of Frost. The best part of Challenges mode for me, is that I get to bring out our entire toolkit. The majority of which rots on my bars never getting used in raids. How often do you cast slow as an arcane mage? How often do you use Polymorph? How often do you use Dragon's Breath to disorient a groups of adds for a few seconds before they murder your group? How often do you cast Remove Curse? Or for goodness sake's what happened to using slow fall on raid members? Or How about using spellsteal? What happened to shatter combos on groups of mobs? (Enjoy trying to remember that list of mobs in the raid that you can freeze) That is our utility let us use it.

If Blizzard decides to add utility give us a raid wide mana cooldown. You could even replace our level 90 talents with it. Turn Rune of Power into a raid wide mana rune with a 2 minute cooldown. Make it so when Incanter's Ward breaks all raid members in 30 yards recieve X% of their mana back. Invocation would probably need to be changed can't think of way to make that raid wide.

I use polymorph to CC the MC'd person on Dark Shamans trash as well as Garrosh trash but of course that's just trash >.> BUT! I get to use spellsteal once a week on Nazgrim to steal the Warshaman's Earth Shield, it always feels good to go outside my usual keybinds.

p.s. I'm completely backing your point, there's very little utility I can bring to my group.

[Imnick]

They suggested that they want to balance Mythic assuming that you have every class available, meaning presumably things like spellsteal will ensure you have a raid spot if that is how they end up running things.