6.0 Mage Speculation & Paranoia

[mrgreenthump]

Really if anything were to be the thing that would "make me quit" it's the removal of mulitdot, one of my favorite new dynamics to mages this expansion.

You would quit over something that was never really even meant to happen? Mage is a direct damage class in it's core. They just had to add a dot to Mages back when all we had was direct damage casts, so our movement dps was terrible and turreting dps was way too good. Multidotting is just something happens to us time to time, because of some silly oversight, this time they just let it stay for some funny reason. But we ultimately knew it was going away as it did before way back. We just aren't a dot class. And realisticly if we wanted to keep us multidotting, they had to add something more to it, just pressing 1 button over and over again with no relation to our standard rotation was just not going to work, if they were going to "fix" Mages.

[Kapadons]

From what I've picked up, they don't like us using AT purely for DPS gain. They want us to use it in creative ways on fights to make the class more fun, rather than just another DPS cooldown. And I'm willing to agree with that.. AT could be an awesome spell if we would use it for something else than DPS gain, it's hard to make all encounters to have a mechanic that AT would work with, but it's not like we have to use it all the time anyways. Plus if it's not related to DPS, the cooldown could be lowered quite a bit.

I think if they let it return us to life after death ( similar to Reincarnation, but needs to be pre-used) or made us immune to death ( the remaining time on AT would be lost and you return to where you used it instantly) it becomes and enormous gain in turns of raid use but not broken as you would need to activate it before death. Also letting us take off any raid debuff if used before it was applied without a consequence ( think Ionization on Jin'Rohk, it removed the debuff but "exploded" it as if it were dispelled) that could also serve as a useful CD.


In all honesty, I personally wouldn't mind if it was an Ankh. Fits with the time aspect of it and gives you an "extra" rez similar to shaman. But I don't actually think this is something they will implement.

Edit- Also wouldn't mind if they turned it to something like a warlock portal (not gateway) in that we get to activate it in a location and when used again it returns us to that location. In SoO I can think of several fights where this would be extremely useful not just for our benefit but could also be used for the raid (thinking belts on SC). But someone mentioned RoP picking up the ability to teleport between them, which would be awesome, but if this happened this AT would be a waste.

[LocNess]

I like this idea, but I'm not really sure where they would take it, if we had an entire tier of talents based around MI how much could they really do with it?

Mirror Images equal your HP pool and also split all damage you take with them by 33%.

Mirror Images copy your spell rotation doing 15% of the damage done of you.

You now have 4 Mirror Images, instead of 2.

Mirror Images now add another copy every 5 seconds (starting with 2), for a total of 7 with 5 seconds remaining.

There are plenty of ideas they can play around with really.

[Kapadons]

You would quit over something that was never really even meant to happen? Mage is a direct damage class in it's core. They just had to add a dot to Mages back when all we had was direct damage casts, so our movement dps was terrible and turreting dps was way too good. Multidotting is just something happens to us time to time, because of some silly oversight, this time they just let it stay for some funny reason. But we ultimately knew it was going away as it did before way back. We just aren't a dot class. And realisticly if we wanted to keep us multidotting, they had to add something more to it, just pressing 1 button over and over again with no relation to our standard rotation was just not going to work, if they were going to "fix" Mages.

I'd be happy if they removed every bomb but Nether Tempest, had it on a 24 seconds duration, unable to multi dot, and buffed Flamestrike and Blizzard to be actual AOE rotation spells.

[mrgreenthump]

I'd be happy if they removed every bomb but Nether Tempest, had it on a 24 seconds duration, unable to multi dot, and buffed Flamestrike and Blizzard to be actual AOE rotation spells.

The 12 second bombs are current 1 of the only things holding Arcane viable when moving. So unless they are going away from making every spell but ABarr have a cast time, please leave bomb duration as it is.

[Mastamage]

The 12 second bombs are current 1 of the only things holding Arcane viable when moving

Snapshotting helps some too. IDK what Arcane will be like come WoD if we're losing snapshotting and multi-dotting. At least that helps with proc fishing.

[voltaa]

@MGT I didn't say I would quit over that, it's just one of the two things that has me most riled up about going into WoD. It may have been an accident to make arcane basically a DoT cleave class, but I thought it gave a good break to the kind of stale narrow minded thinking most people have that "mages shouldn't be a DoT class" "mages are about direct damage". Change is good, even when unintentional. We got two very different playstyles out of our bombs, being great multidot, as well as amazing single target, without making our direct damage spells hit too hard. I would take the current design any day over being stuck as a purely single target spec (arcane) again.

[Deleted]

I hope they revamp both the Level 90 Talents and the Magebomb-Tier!

Bombs:

Living Bomb should be what it used to be... Bomb of choice when AoEing without targetlimit.
Nether Tempest for 1-2 Mobs. Maybe even limit it to 2 targets.
Frostbomb complete revamp to make it the Bomb of choice when you need CC. Longer Snare, maybe even a short root.

Level 90 Talents:

Level 90 Talents should be completely dumped... i would have no problem when they made it like the Warlock talents.
One Talent with which you can cast Arcane Blast, Fireball and Frostbolt while moving.
One Talent that increases AoE-DMG (basically like Fire&Brimstone... Fireball/Frostbolt/Arcane Blast doing only 50% DMG but hitting all targets for 10sec).
One Talent that pushes your Singletarget-DPS... why not Rune of Power as a CD? +15% DMG while you stand in it for 15secs.

Alter Time:

I would like to have it with a much shorter CD and not being able to use it for DPS. So we can use it for what it was originally designed... survivabilty and utility.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

@voltaa: What about trading multidot for actually strong AOE?

[Mastamage]

@voltaa: What about trading multidot for actually strong AOE?

this times a million

[Deleted]

-snip-

Leave the Warlock talents as Warlock talents; give Mages something refreshing and somewhat original to replace current 90 talents.

Disagree RE Alter Time. Fine for it to have tweaks and move towards more utility etc, but it should still be tied to DPS at least a little IMO.

@voltaa: What about trading multidot for actually strong AOE?

Multi-dot less situational than strong AoE, ergo has more potential uses. Personally, as it's already been confirmed that we're losing multi-dot would certainly like more AoE competitiveness and very slightly buffed ST to boot. Multi-dotting is always strong and so if we don't have access to it we need something to ensure we're still worth bringing.

[Polarthief]

Leave the Warlock talents as Warlock talents; give Mages something refreshing and somewhat original to replace current 90 talents.

Disagree RE Alter Time. Fine for it to have tweaks and move towards more utility etc, but it should still be tied to DPS at least a little IMO.



Multi-dot less situational than strong AoE, ergo has more potential uses. Personally, as it's already been confirmed that we're losing multi-dot would certainly like more AoE competitiveness and very slightly buffed ST to boot. Multi-dotting is always strong and so if we don't have access to it we need something to ensure we're still worth bringing.

AT still will be good for DPS (sligtly) for Arcane because of Mana, but I don't want it used for DPS ever. It's a weird, clunky, and can potentially kill you.

This is assuming they make our AoE less garbage, first.

[voltaa]

@voltaa: What about trading multidot for actually strong AOE?

if they cut our multidot without some kind of compensation for it, I will be pissed, while this would be ok it isn't preferable to multidot. As cycobi said, strong AoE is situational, and further to that, at least as arcane, we already have it. On 10+ targets we can already pump out 1-2mil DPS with glyphed CoC and AE, while fire could use an AoE buff, I feel like we are just getting some of our toolkit taken away by removing multidot (RIP dark animus, I loved you).

Despite how much people said we needed some sort of raid CD or more utility to be brought to raids (since warlocks had it all) we actually were very diverse in the roles we could play this expansion, excelling in every situation, and a lot of this had to do with our multidot capabilities.

[Constraint]

AT still will be good for DPS (sligtly) for Arcane because of Mana, but I don't want it used for DPS ever. It's a weird, clunky, and can potentially kill you.

This is assuming they make our AoE less garbage, first.

I'd disagree. It's clunky if you don't know how to use it properly. What's clunky about saving your mana/cds/procs at a certain time and using them again? How is that weird? As for killing you - use it at the right time, I guess. It adds a small amount of skill to the ability, which is always welcome.

I for one am sick to death of Arcane Explosion spamming on AoE - how that ever made it out of beta is beyond me. Is it that hard to tune Flamestrike and Blizzard to be the go-to choices for AoE for their respective schools? I'd even prefer the Flamestrike->Blizzard weaving of old, along with DoT cleave.

[Orrin]

Change is good, even when unintentional. We got two very different playstyles out of our bombs, being great multidot, as well as amazing single target, without making our direct damage spells hit too hard. I would take the current design any day over being stuck as a purely single target spec (arcane) again.

While I agree that change is good, thing is, every other caster class has DoTs and is multidotter. Soif I want to play DoT class, I can ply my druid or my Lock. Or I can level a Priest and a Shaman. I think that Mages whould be left DoTless.
Living Bomb was something unique for 3 Maeg specs, when all Mages got DoTs it just became 'one more DoT'

[Deleted]

While I agree that change is good, thing is, every other caster class has DoTs and is multidotter. Soif I want to play DoT class, I can ply my druid or my Lock. Or I can level a Priest and a Shaman. I think that Mages whould be left DoTless.
Living Bomb was something unique for 3 Maeg specs, when all Mages got DoTs it just became 'one more DoT'

What's wrong with the idea if you want some dot's and multidot play Fire, If you don't play frost or arcane?
Maybe it is healthier to have have no living bomb in fire spec either and just have the ignites and pyroblast as its feature. But i still have to ask this question.

if they cut our multidot without some kind of compensation for it, I will be pissed, while this would be ok it isn't preferable to multidot. As cycobi said, strong AoE is situational, and further to that, at least as arcane, we already have it. On 10+ targets we can already pump out 1-2mil DPS with glyphed CoC and AE, while fire could use an AoE buff, I feel like we are just getting some of our toolkit taken away by removing multidot (RIP dark animus, I loved you).

Despite how much people said we needed some sort of raid CD or more utility to be brought to raids (since warlocks had it all) we actually were very diverse in the roles we could play this expansion, excelling in every situation, and a lot of this had to do with our multidot capabilities.

Here is an interesting aspect you pointed out. The changes to the dots might result in fire loosing their niche on being strong at 3mob boss fights (cleave). Are you prepared on loosing that?

It's kind of ironic, that blizzard is afraid of making big changes to a class but by just tweaking spells and abilities you can change the niches of a class and that's how I identify my class as well.

[Obelisk Kai]

What's wrong with the idea if you want some dot's and multidot play Fire, If you don't play frost or arcane?
Maybe it is healthier to have have no living bomb in fire spec either and just have the ignites and pyroblast as its feature. But i still have to ask this question..

I agree. Dots, even if mostly passively applied, should be the sole province of fire. It's part of the reason I loathe the level 75 talent tier, they took something that should be fire only and made it baseline for the entire class and the only reason I can think they did that was to reinforce the replication of the fire rotation across Arcane and Frost.

Similarly, Frost should be built up as the Mage pet spec as the elemental is the unique and separate selling point for that spec.

Arcane should be the uncomplicate nuke the stuffing out of the target spec.

Here is an interesting aspect you pointed out. The changes to the dots might result in fire loosing their niche on being strong at 3mob boss fights (cleave). Are you prepared on loosing that?

It's kind of ironic, that blizzard is afraid of making big changes to a class but by just tweaking spells and abilities you can change the niches of a class and that's how I identify my class as well.

Well we are losing multi-dotting, but does Living Bomb count? For me multi dotting is the ability to apply infinite dots to infinite mobs, whereas living bomb is capped at three targets and fire as a whole cleaves it's dots via its mechanics.
I sort of say make living bomb fire only again and then allow us to cleave it with inferno blast.

- - - Updated - - -

While I agree that change is good, thing is, every other caster class has DoTs and is multidotter. Soif I want to play DoT class, I can ply my druid or my Lock. Or I can level a Priest and a Shaman. I think that Mages whould be left DoTless.
Living Bomb was something unique for 3 Maeg specs, when all Mages got DoTs it just became 'one more DoT'

I agree with this except for Mages should be left dotless. Fire has to be our dot spec. A passive dot from ignite, another passive dot from pyroblast, a super dot from combustion and another dot from living bomb. That is actually a fun design in my personal opinion.

But Frost and Arcane shouldn't have even a whiff of damage over time.

[Deleted]

Tbh, I really liked Mage gameplay when they introduced unlimited Living Bombs. I have fond memories of Ulduar and Yogg+0 progress, multidotting away. It is also very convenient in solo play - pulling mobs one nether tempest at a time. Although I have to admit it doesn't feel very "magey", but it provided me with fun gameplay.

Concerning alter time I was mostly disappointed when I just returned to the game about a month ago and learned that alter time was used as a damage cooldown. Before, I thought of all the possibilities in which I could use this spell as a utility cooldown - but doing so actually feels bad, because you didn't use it for dps.
Alter time left a bad taste in my mouth and I wouldn't mind it becoming a situational and pure utility cd instead of some clunky dps cd.

Ultimately, I would also be fine with the removal of our multi-doting capabilities as long as we get some decent reimbursement in the aoe dps department. And as someone already mentioned: More interesting aoe rotations involving blizzard and/or flamestrike respectively, instead of AE spam.

[Deleted]

Concerning alter time I was mostly disappointed when I just returned to the game about a month ago and learned that alter time was used as a damage cooldown. Before, I thought of all the possibilities in which I could use this spell as a utility cooldown - but doing so actually feels bad, because you didn't use it for dps.
Alter time left a bad taste in my mouth and I wouldn't mind it becoming a situational and pure utility cd instead of some clunky dps cd.

It's not "just" a damage cooldown, there have been fights this tier were, at top-end progression, Mages were asked to use Alter Time as a utility spell rather than a DPS spell. It can (and is) still used for utility.

My reasoning against it having pure utility uses instead of DPS uses (or both, that's fine) is because we, as a class, already have SO much personal utility, having extra is needless and almost pointless.

[Obelisk Kai]

It's not "just" a damage cooldown, there have been fights this tier were, at top-end progression, Mages were asked to use Alter Time as a utility spell rather than a DPS spell. It can (and is) still used for utility.

My reasoning against it having pure utility uses instead of DPS uses (or both, that's fine) is because we, as a class, already have SO much personal utility, having extra is needless and almost pointless.

How would alter time function as a utility cooldown I wonder. I want the spell preserved, and from various tweets we KNOW Alter time is going to get redesigned to break the synergy with our damage, I am curious as to what the end result will be.

Is the six second snapshot too short for example? Could we hold our snap shot for a much longer period of time rather than six seconds?

As the dps boosting aspect is probably being purged, could we do with a shorted cooldown on the spell or would that make it overpowered?