6.0 Mage Speculation & Paranoia

[mrgreenthump]

I was thinking about combustion: spreading it from the crystal to the boss an then having the crystal doing a good chunk of the combustion dmg on the boss again x 1.3.

Fact is though, we don't know what kind of combustion we are going to have come 6.0 beta. Combustion has changed like 20 times from vanilla till now, so who knows can we even spread it.

And ofc we would cleave the current combustion to the crystal, but we would also nuke the crystal really really hard after cleaving a combustion to it.. But that is only 1 option as we do more damage while we blast our AT macro atm than we do when nuking with combustion, so blasting everything on the crystal and letting a combustion tick 4-5 seconds and cleaving that combustion back to the boss, might be more damage overall. But time will tell..

[Polarthief]

I very much agree. Looking at the last blue posts regarding mage, Alter time seems to catch the headlines of a mage ability in desperate need of change. While AT can be a bit "clumsy" at times, it is nowhere near the lazy and punishing-to-the-player design behind the L90 talents.

Which is what worries me greatly.

Both of these issues are well known to the devs, they know how strongly people feel about them. The fact that they haven't yet addressed what they plan to do about them when they haven't even announced a date for a beta doesn't really surprise me, we aren't being ignored just because we aren't being tweeted about.

Not saying what they will do with a certain thing and not even addressing that they acknowledge the problem are two completely different things. The only bomb tweet we got, for example, was that we were no longer able to multidot in WoD. Does that mean LB/NT lose their multidotting or that all 3 bombs are flat out gone? If the former, that's just a significant nerf and makes the bombs that much more pointless (and IMPOSSIBLE to balance in ST vs AOE situations), while the latter saves a headache and lets them design mechanics around it. But the tweet given doesn't really address that they understand the issue; more that we're either getting a nerf or that they actually do understand the issue without ever having said so, and with what blind faith has brought us in the past, I can no longer be faithful unless it's in writing at this point. Call me jaded, but I'm tired of getting burned.

I was thinking about combustion: spreading it from the crystal to the boss an then having the crystal doing a good chunk of the combustion dmg on the boss again x 1.3.

People give Combustion and the Crystal WAY too much credit for the amount of time they have. You have to:
- Have Crystal off cooldown
- Have Combustion off cooldown
- Have at LEAST a HS ready (IB if no HU)
=== Have IB off cooldown if no HU
- Have most of your trinkets/other ICDs off cooldown

Then, you have to summon the crystal, launch off multiple Pyroblasts, and by the time you hit Combustion, you'll be lucky to have 2s left (assuming GCD isn't fully maxed and at best possible RNG with all crit Pyros). Yeah, it'll get a small boost, but it's more or less the Pyroblasts and Ignite that will be dealing the most damage; not the 2s of Combustion.

[Akraen]

A more spreadable combustion would be cool. Could be augmented with a fanning the flames style glyph or something. Fire's skillcap could be in keeping the fire "lit" on targets.

Less damage from pyroblast! would probably go a long way to freeing up other things with the spec. I think that's its biggest problem.

Also that setup sounds incredibly tedious and not fun at all, Pewpew. Too many steps, too easy to have RNG screw you over.

[xmx]

I was trying to think of major abilities in the game that mages could get reworked into their lvl 100 talents.

Cataclysm was ofc deathwing and the dk ones were all icc mechanics.

KT has nether bomb but that is basically NT so that probably isnt it.

Jaina has 2 water eles with her now so maybe it could be minion based?

Just spitballing here

this cataclism spell i dont think ts from DW its from Karenthad the green fire boss

[Frost1129]

Which is what worries me greatly.



Not saying what they will do with a certain thing and not even addressing that they acknowledge the problem are two completely different things. The only bomb tweet we got, for example, was that we were no longer able to multidot in WoD. Does that mean LB/NT lose their multidotting or that all 3 bombs are flat out gone? If the former, that's just a significant nerf and makes the bombs that much more pointless (and IMPOSSIBLE to balance in ST vs AOE situations), while the latter saves a headache and lets them design mechanics around it. But the tweet given doesn't really address that they understand the issue; more that we're either getting a nerf or that they actually do understand the issue without ever having said so, and with what blind faith has brought us in the past, I can no longer be faithful unless it's in writing at this point. Call me jaded, but I'm tired of getting burned.



People give Combustion and the Crystal WAY too much credit for the amount of time they have. You have to:
- Have Crystal off cooldown
- Have Combustion off cooldown
- Have at LEAST a HS ready (IB if no HU)
=== Have IB off cooldown if no HU
- Have most of your trinkets/other ICDs off cooldown

Then, you have to summon the crystal, launch off multiple Pyroblasts, and by the time you hit Combustion, you'll be lucky to have 2s left (assuming GCD isn't fully maxed and at best possible RNG with all crit Pyros). Yeah, it'll get a small boost, but it's more or less the Pyroblasts and Ignite that will be dealing the most damage; not the 2s of Combustion.

You'd probably want to build the combustion on the boss, drop the crystal, cleave your high ignite/pyro/combustion onto the crystal and then start blowing it up with the remainder of your pot/trinket/meta proc times. Trinkets and pots last long enough to still be up after combustion building. You'll end up having a full 10s of combustion (in addition to it ticking on the boss) on the crystal in addition to the boosted pyros/fireball damage.

[LocNess]

I want our original combustion back, one that increased crit damage and crit chance. Screw this DoT crap. Though I understand how people can like it.

[mrgreenthump]

I want our original combustion back, one that increased crit damage and crit chance. Screw this DoT crap. Though I understand how people can like it.

Hmm.. Weren't the first Combustion like superbad? I can't even remember it properly, but I think it was like 100% crit for 1 spell with like 5 or 10 min cooldown.. Or was that the 2nd version of combustion.. Anyways it felt really crappy even when it got extended to 3 spells.. Though it did get easy start on ignite rolling back then.


But I think you really strike on something with the increasing critical damage rather than ignite---> dot.. And with reforging going bye bye, we can't stack crit like before for the crit damage increase to be op..

Other option I like would be to increase Ignite to 100% spell damage when combustion is active. Would probably be more towards the spells identity.

[Aquamonkey]

Hmm.. Weren't the first Combustion like superbad? I can't even remember it properly, but I think it was like 100% crit for 1 spell with like 5 or 10 min cooldown.. Or was that the 2nd version of combustion.. Anyways it felt really crappy even when it got extended to 3 spells.. Though it did get easy start on ignite rolling back then.

Originally, it was 100% crit for 1 spell. In 1.11, the mage revamp made it ramping up 10% crit chance each spell until 3 crits. WotLK added crit dmg I think.

[mrgreenthump]

Originally, it was 100% crit for 1 spell. In 1.11, the mage revamp made it ramping up 10% crit chance each spell until 3 crits. WotLK added crit dmg I think.

Great my memory ain't failing me yet!

[LocNess]

Yeah I was thinking of the WotLK Combustion. We do have new tertiary stats coming out obviously and it would be really nice to have our CDs take advantage of it.

[Polarthief]

A more spreadable combustion would be cool. Could be augmented with a fanning the flames style glyph or something. Fire's skillcap could be in keeping the fire "lit" on targets.

Less damage from pyroblast! would probably go a long way to freeing up other things with the spec. I think that's its biggest problem.

Also that setup sounds incredibly tedious and not fun at all, Pewpew. Too many steps, too easy to have RNG screw you over.

So spreading it refreshes the duration? Ooh, that sounds neat I guess :3

Indeed! Nerfing Pyroblast should fix a lot of things, such as Fireball's pathetically low DPET and RNG always fucking you hard. If they remove the bomb tier, that's a lot of leeway to add other things to fill up that 20-40% damage.

I know! That's why I quit Fire the first chance I got (a week before Siege, in fact) because it's like that now, but just slightly, just EVER so slightly less tedious. Really hope they unfuck themselves in WoD though, otherwise, I'll only be visible in the tallest Mage Tower of my Garrison, peering at all of you from my sneaky fort of spying on everyone :3

You'd probably want to build the combustion on the boss, drop the crystal, cleave your high ignite/pyro/combustion onto the crystal and then start blowing it up with the remainder of your pot/trinket/meta proc times. Trinkets and pots last long enough to still be up after combustion building. You'll end up having a full 10s of combustion (in addition to it ticking on the boss) on the crystal in addition to the boosted pyros/fireball damage.

This is assuming it's cleaveable ONTO the crystal. You can cleave things OFF of anything, but it's hard to cleave things ONTO other things. Not to mention, the hitbox of the crystal is probably pathetically tiny and won't connect to the boss's center (which is where things cleave OFF of), while the boss's hitbox is huge and can easily be cleaved ONTO (things will cleave onto the edges of a hitbox IIRC).

Of course, I could just be talking complete bullshit, but even then, you lose all that delicious Pre-Combustion damage getting the 30% Crystal buff to Fireballs getting it instead.

- - - Updated - - -

I want our original combustion back, one that increased crit damage and crit chance. Screw this DoT crap. Though I understand how people can like it.

Loc, that style of Combustion may work with your suggestion for change, but in its current state, that would absolutely ruin Fire.

HOWEVER, if we got the old Combustion and it was PASSIVE, that would actually be an awesome change to Fire, don't you think?


Combustion
Passive

Gives you two Combustion Charges. For every successful Fireball, Pyroblast, and X/Y/Z Spell (just for the future) cast, the critical strike chance of your Fireball, Pyroblast, and X/Y/Z Spells are increased by 10% per cast. For every one of those spells that you crit, you lose one Combustion Charge. Upon losing both charges, the bonus critical strike chance will be reset and you will regain your two Combustion Charges.


- You're given two charges. As long as you have at least one charge left, your crit continues to go up.
- Critting two spells removes both charges, resetting the cycle. Your two charges will be refreshed upon losing the second one.
- The reason for charges is for easy UI/Addon integration, rather than Icicles which has no integration (as far as I know, at least...)
- This fixes bad RNG while simultaneously devaluing Crit (something that Fire NEEDS devalue from, desperately)
- Low-geared Mages can now play Fire because Crit is not nearly as much of an issue, while high-geared Mages won't scale out of control due to the devalue of crit. Damage can easily be tweaked around a "base" crit chance.
- A problem that arises from this is that it leaves Fire completely Cooldown-less. We'd obviously need a new cooldown and something more to the rotation.

[LocNess]

Cooldowns are really easy to make honestly, and I would be completely ok with a passive increase in crit over time to devalue it. Works out for the Diablo 3 Demon Hunter - Sharpshooter passive IIRC. After awhile you don't even spec into it, so maybe even a talent doing that could be interesting.

Oh well, one can dream. I just want Combustion to lose its high RNG nature, even if its only like 5-10% of your damage done now it can still suck going from a 50k combustion one pull to a 35k one next.

[Polarthief]

Cooldowns are really easy to make honestly, and I would be completely ok with a passive increase in crit over time to devalue it. Works out for the Diablo 3 Demon Hunter - Sharpshooter passive IIRC. After awhile you don't even spec into it, so maybe even a talent doing that could be interesting.

Oh well, one can dream. I just want Combustion to lose its high RNG nature, even if its only like 5-10% of your damage done now it can still suck going from a 50k combustion one pull to a 35k one next.

It's not going to increase crit over time. If anything, Combustion devalues as Crit goes up because you don't get as much crit from it. It's the pure opposite of CM (CM increases crit as crit/gear goes up, while my Passive Combustion idea DECREASES crit as crit/gear goes up), and a very healthy change because it unties Fire from the heavy reliance of Crit.

The only problem then would be making Mastery and Haste more useful.

And cooldowns, yeah. They can be as lazy as they want, as long as it's not a Haste increase like IV because that's messy, and I would be totally fine.

[fusionz]

"Some are more multi-DoT heavy than others. Mages in WoD won't multi-DoT at all (Well, technically, Pyro's DoT could be multi-DoTed.)" - Celestation

Bombs seem to be out in WoD,
is combustion out too ?
ignite? :X

EDIT: Or maybe bombs limited to a single target?

[LocNess]

"Some are more multi-DoT heavy than others. Mages in WoD won't multi-DoT at all (Well, technically, Pyro's DoT could be multi-DoTed.)" - Celestation

Bombs seem to be out in WoD,
is combustion out too ?
ignite? :X

EDIT: Or maybe bombs limited to a single target?

I am assuming they will just have target limitations, or drastically lower damage on them (however, that just makes them a short maintenance spell essentially which is just boring as shit so I doubt that).

Combustion and ignite are most likely remaining at our current set of knowledge.

[Orrin]

"
is combustion out too ?
ignite? :X

Miltidotting is traditional DoTs put in traditional manner on several enemies. Neither Comsution, nor Ignite are traditional DoTs.

[Imnick]

I kind of like applying multiple DoTs for AOE but I suppose I can live without it, especially if it means more improvements to our other AOE abilities

I'm going to miss AT for DPS but I guess I am a minority

[LocNess]

I kind of like applying multiple DoTs for AOE but I suppose I can live without it, especially if it means more improvements to our other AOE abilities

I'm going to miss AT for DPS but I guess I am a minority

I loved multi-dotting adds with nether tempest and watching all the numbers and cleave, it was fun.......but on the other hand we are getting meteor .

Also if they completely ruin the DPS part of Alter Time I am going to be sad. I just wish they could fix it so things would either:

A) Not proc during it

B) Have a glyph to not lose anything that procc'd during it (it would just lose the extended 6 seconds).

[mrgreenthump]

I'm going to miss AT for DPS but I guess I am a minority

I have mixed feelings about it tbh. I always thought it needing setup was 1 of the only things that made Fire not totally derp for me, but all that said.. it removed a lot of fun things you could do just for fun during raid encounters. I just wish they would add defensive attributes to it with removing the buff snapshotting(would think that is the change) from it..

But again we don't know anything yet, so too early

[LocNess]

I have mixed feelings about it tbh. I always thought it needing setup was 1 of the only things that made Fire not totally derp for me, but all that said.. it removed a lot of fun things you could do just for fun during raid encounters. I just wish they would add defensive attributes to it with removing the buff snapshotting(would think that is the change) from it..

But again we don't know anything yet, so too early

I loved during Tsulong this expansion when I learned you could use it to completely reset your stacks. Means I could sit there and scorchweave for even longer