[Mage-WoD] Mage Beta Discussion

[Alexand3r]

If frost mages, on the top of the huge arsenal they got, need double blink to survive to a team that stacks stuns, what in the hell do arcane and fire mages need to survive that 0o? I would pray for them.

I don't think the Improved Frost Nova perk will stay. It doesn't feel "frosty" to me at all (that's my opinion, of course) and I don't think Frost needs it.
It would be better off as an Arcane perk, either tied to Frost Nova as it is now or to another spell.

They will show us a new build later this week (based on a tweet I read earlier this day) so hopefully we will see some good changes.

[Northem]

I don't think the Improved Frost Nova perk will stay. It doesn't feel "frosty" to me at all (that's my opinion, of course) and I don't think Frost needs it.
It would be better off as an Arcane perk, either tied to Frost Nova as it is now or to another spell.

They will show us a new build later this week (based on a tweet I read earlier this day) so hopefully we will see some good changes.

Exactly, that would make sense.

Simply making the Glyph of Rapid Displacement becomes the Arcane perk for enhance Blink, and all done!

[Imnick]

Patch Notes are hopefully tomorrow, according to the dude writing them.
Not sure what will be in them that we don't already know but I guess that's just because they haven't patched in the new Oracle spec yet.

[Seneca]

So, you're saying that we should wait to test things and report back to Blizzard? Crazy notion you have there.

Nope, I am saying exactly the opposite. What I am saying is that speculating is not useless, as lots of people make it sound, because (wow) history taught us that the most of the time we (the community) were right about the speculation.

If you don't understand what I say, I blame my english skills, don't worry <3.

Patch Notes are hopefully tomorrow, according to the dude writing them.
Not sure what will be in them that we don't already know but I guess that's just because they haven't patched in the new Oracle spec yet.

Yeah as you say, I don't think there's much that we don't already know in the last build, because basically celestalon confirmed everything on twitter, so the chances are very low that we will see something different.

[Swizzle]

Nope, I am saying exactly the opposite. What I am saying is that speculating is not useless, as lots of people make it sound, because (wow) history taught us that the most of the time we (the community) were right about the speculation.

If you don't understand what I say, I blame my english skills, don't worry <3.

There wasn't much speculation about Fire PvP because everyone was focused on the Water Elemental and how powerful the Frost Mastery was. No one noticed how strong Fire was until it came to like five beta builds (when they unlocked testing PvP gear and a lot of players got to max level). When people ACTUALLY played it in a PvP setting, everyone noticed that Fire was strong in 1v1 and 2v2 due to the burst it had, so they reported it (I personally never felt Fire was too strong in 3v3 since their burst took a lot of prep work and was negated by any dispel, but they were damned annoying to deal with, that's for sure) and Blizzard dealt with it. People were still on here claiming Fire would be the way to go and that it was bye bye for Frost. These people were wrong.

In any case, the point is that you CANNOT do anything with conjecture, you need testing to see how things play. You need to give the tools to the players and see how they abuse it to figure out how things actually work.

[Seneca]

There wasn't much speculation about Fire PvP because everyone was focused on the Water Elemental and how powerful the Frost Mastery was. No one noticed how strong Fire was until it came to like five beta builds (when they unlocked testing PvP gear and a lot of players got to max level). When people ACTUALLY played it in a PvP setting, everyone noticed that Fire was strong in 1v1 and 2v2 due to the burst it had, so they reported it (I personally never felt Fire was too strong in 3v3 since their burst took a lot of prep work and was negated by any dispel, but they were damned annoying to deal with, that's for sure) and Blizzard dealt with it. People were still on here claiming Fire would be the way to go and that it was bye bye for Frost. These people were wrong.

In any case, the point is that you CANNOT do anything with conjecture, you need testing to see how things play. You need to give the tools to the players and see how they abuse it to figure out how things actually work.

I agree that theory + practice > theory, but, by the time practice will be available too, it will be too late to make huge changes. Theory alone is not everything, still, it is a lot of value. For example, if we consider that arcane has Slow as cc and 60% ms for 2sec after blinking as mobility, while frost has FB, FBB, FO, Blizzard, Pet's Freeze, DP as ccs and 2 blink as mobility, I don't think anyone can argue who will be the better cc and mobility wise (and indirecty, survivability wise) by a huge margin, even if we do not consider the practice aspect. (And I'm not comparing them about the other aspects because it would get too long). We don't know if frost/arcane will be good or bad, still, if arcane is going to be good, frost will be better. If frost is going to be bad, arcane is going to be worse. That's the point.

Example: maybe frost needs double blink in WoD, otherwise it would not survive melee cleaves, ok, I get it. BUT, if frost needs it in order to be competitive, then arcane, that is already plagued by lots of weakness, would need like 4x blink.

[Northem]

Example: maybe frost needs double blink in WoD, otherwise it would not survive melee cleaves, ok, I get it. BUT, if frost needs it in order to be competive, then arcane, that is already plagued by lots of weakness, would need like 4x blink.

Best summarized impossible. My applause.

[Alroxas]

Regarding arcane... something that really confused me about the design of arcane. The thing where you spam arcane blast until 40% mana, then evocate to 100%, then do your "conservation" rotation. To me, that style was very refined. I will admit, it was too simplistic and boring, but the idea of burn phase/conserve phase always just seemed right to me. The arcane mastery completely obliterated that design philosophy - am I the only one who thinks the current arcane design philosophy is back-assward, and the previous "burn/conserve" style was superior both thematically, as well as in the fun factor?

With the way mastery works now, that is a situation no one would ever be in. The arcane rotation just feels so enclosed, like there's absolutely no choice, no human in element in rolling the dice in such a way. I think this is yet another reason why arcane is so bad in pvp as well.

I dunno, I just think the "keep your mana as close to 100% all the time" design philosophy really sucked all the fun out of arcane. It doesn't look like this is going to change in WoD, either, although someone correct me if I'm wrong there. I do love playing fire, but it would be nice if arcane had some of that type of wrath-style fun factor again for a change of pace - it would seem that they would have to completely re-do the mastery though to make that happen. Thoughts?

Basically it seems that the Arcane Mastery (and it's scaling) was just too darn good to allow anything but the "keep mana close to 100%" game play. In fact, that whole scorching weaving fiasco showed how bad (or good) mastery was and hopefully in WoD we will see changes to make other stats as appealing.

For instance, if Readiness affects Arcane Power CD and Arcane Power change to reduce spell cost by 10%, then there could be a significant shift in secondary stat valuation. However given that reforging is gone, this will be pretty limited in scope. As you will only be able to stack a certain amount of Readiness and it seems unlikely that you could reach ridiculous (but noteworthy) levels.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

by the time practice will be available too, it will be too late to make huge changes.

I'm not seeing why this keeps popping up. They're not going to launch the player beta with mechanic changes set in stone. We're at the point in the alpha that most of us wouldn't even know is taking place, had they not decided to let employees take it home.

[Seneca]

I'm not seeing why this keeps popping up. They're not going to launch the player beta with mechanic changes set in stone. We're at the point in the alpha that most of us wouldn't even know is taking place, had they not decided to let employees take it home.

I speak for experience. In every beta they do not change mechanics if it is not extremely necessary, they sometimes said it in the past too, beta is more number tweaking than anything else.

We are in alpha, but this alpha is a sort of very very early beta in disguise, in fact lots of times some developer confirmed this during these weeks. It's a lot of time they are running WoD alpha, this is like a very late alpha. They called it "alpha" because they did not invite players yet, but it is up by a lot of time. I don't remember the source I am sorry but maybe someone know it.

In addition, more than the alpha current state, the concerns I have are in the parts you didn't quote :P

[Kuni Zyrekai]

In addition, more than the alpha current state, the concerns I have are in the parts you didn't quote :P

Wasn't particularly interested in explaining that while Arcane has holes on the PVP side, Slow is still better than a vast majority of the slows Frost has, making most of that list moot.

[Seneca]

Wasn't particularly interested in explaining that while Arcane has holes on the PVP side, Slow is still better than a vast majority of the slows Frost has, making most of that list moot.

Yeah, we can both agree that Slow is better than some snare effects that frost has, if we do a 1-1 comparison. But, frost has not to choose a cc spell, it gets the whole package. So we have to compare cc arsenal vs cc arsenal rather than Slow vs Blizzard, for example. (I was not implying that, because frost has 6 ccs and arcane has 1, frost ccing's power is 600% better.)

Moreover, even if some frost's cc looks worse than SLow, 1-1, you do not have to forget that they all together compensate each other, the so called sinergy. Are your enemies temporarily immune to snare effects? You can use Freeze and DP, as arcane you are fucked. There are 2 melees chasing you? You can use FO/Freeze, as arcane you are fucked. Did your frost nova get dispelled? You can use Freeze, as arcane you are fucked. Is a healer casting a heal and your CS is on cd? You can use DP, as arcane, you are fucked, and so on.

Is Slow as good as Blizzard? Nope, Slow is actually much better, Blizzard is almost never used for its cc, pvp wise. Is Slow as good as Blizzard plus FB FBB FO DP Freeze? Not even remotely close.

In addition, Slow looks overrated on paper. You lose 1,5sec to use it, does no damage, and lasts 8sec. To achieve a 100% uptime on a target you lose 18,75% of your time doing nothing but applying it.
Slow in WoD will be castable on multi targets. Does it look op? To achieve a 100% uptime on 3 targets you have to spend 56,25% of your time doing nothing but applying it.

Snare effects haven't ever killed anyone. Who will kill your enemies if you spend so much time to do something that other specs can do passively while doing tons of damage too?

And, it is just a snare effect, so it has limited uses as all snare effects, slowing an elemental shaman that is spamming Lava Burst is not going to help you. Slowing an hunter is not going to help you. Slowing a warrior that does never move but just jumps/charges, on the top of the 50% snare effect passively applied (so, it kinda counters your slow) is not going to help you, and so on. There are lots of cases where pressing your Slow spell will have purely negative impact (you just waste 1 gcd).

[Deleted]

One - I was actually trying to make a serious point about fire and the specs complete lack of controllable DPS cooldowns before all this hijacking started. I would actually appreciate it if anyone else had thoughts on that.

Second - as an EU player, the fact that the mage MVP only posts on the us.battle.net forums (which I do not have access to) seems to create an echo chamber for him. The EU raiding scene is more developed at this point than the US scene, and it's bad for the game to basically have those players cut out of the discussion. Sure, we can participate here on the MMOC forums or on eu.battle.net but it's not nearly the same impact. Whatever your opinion of our "MVP" is, I think we can call agree that's a bad situation.

[Frah]

One - I was actually trying to make a serious point about fire and the specs complete lack of controllable DPS cooldowns before all this hijacking started. I would actually appreciate it if anyone else had thoughts on that.

Second - as an EU player, the fact that the mage MVP only posts on the us.battle.net forums (which I do not have access to) seems to create an echo chamber for him. The EU raiding scene is more developed at this point than the US scene, and it's bad for the game to basically have those players cut out of the discussion. Sure, we can participate here on the MMOC forums or on eu.battle.net but it's not nearly the same impact. Whatever your opinion of our "MVP" is, I think we can call agree that's a bad situation.

I would not say the lack of controllable CD for fire is a big deal. However I seem to be of a different view of the majority on here in that I fully welcome specs to be different enough as to have strengths and weaknesses and let us have choice in what spec, talents and glyphs we pick per fight. With the easier reforging, gemming and enchanting planned then the facility's are there to let us have this. That to me would be far more interesting than having a single spec that performs best for an entire tier on every boss. That is why I dont see a problem with it because its weakness might well be that it lacks control but it has strengths in other areas. Examples of weakness is the need for short duration burst like (this is the best example but yes a long time ago!) de-constructors heart which lasted long enough for a CD to be valid but maybe too short to get a strong combustion. However it has the strength of being very strong (past incarnations have demonstrated this at least) at cleave fights, which are all too common now, and with the increased target cap only makes it better.

The way I see it is that if a boss came up like de-constructor then you would not want to be fire and this is not a bad thing. We have 3 dps specs and if they could all cope with every situation a boss throws at us then yes there will always be a cookie cutter spec for every boss like we have had for, well, ever. However if each spec has a strength and a weakness then it becomes desirable to change and all specs should get their turn in the limelight over a tier. Personally I would love to enter an instance and be fire then next boss change half my glyphs and talents then next boss switch to frost then boss after fire again and so on.

I play and love mage, I am not a fire mage, I am not an arcane mage and I am not a frost mage I am simply a mage and will take up the school that best fits with the job in hand.



Oh and to add yes it is a bit annoying that the EU community is pretty much isolated from the dev team. It is also annoying that the most listened to member of the community (no matter how smart she/he is and how good their analysis can be sometimes) is someone who confesses to not play a competitive level of pvp or pve. Yes the non-hardcore croud need a voice and in her/him they have that but what about the voice of the top pvp and pve players? Not much we can do about it EU gets ignored in more than just this aspect of the game!

[Frost1129]

Unless they have figured out how to make crit not crap for frost/arcane, having Fire mages switch to those specs for any non-cleave fight or fights which requires burst is not going to be a good time.

[Frah]

Unless they have figured out how to make crit not crap for frost/arcane, having Fire mages switch to those specs for any non-cleave fight or fights which requires burst is not going to be a good time.

Well that is all relative really isnt it. Now it would be an absolute nightmare as it would require regemming, reforging, working out optimal reforges, changing enchants and changing items.

In wod:
Gem sockets will not be as abundant as now so time wise it becomes easier to change. (cost wise depends on abundance of gems)
Reforging vanishes. So working out reforging between specs as well as the actual reforging time and cost vanishes.
Enchants cover less slots so easier to swap about. More choices too so it might be that crit/haste/mastery might not even be the best for any spec (same for gems)

So end of the day changing from 1 spec to another would be significantly less time consuming as it is now. Cost wise would depend on things we will not know for a long time. Some things might not even need changed depending on what gems and enchants end up being thrown into the mix. So potentially the only kicker might be in having the gear sets, although odds are half your items will be tier items anyway so half that problem is gone too.

[Deleted]

Unless they have figured out how to make crit not crap for frost/arcane, having Fire mages switch to those specs for any non-cleave fight or fights which requires burst is not going to be a good time.

Aside all that speculations about perks, spell chaganges, tallents and basicaly everything im more eager to see actualy that part.
From my point of view
crit is not that bad stat for arcane - hell i love when my blast or barrage crit for 1mln+... hell its a beatifll sight, but its just mastery give way more benefit for its playstyle.
mastery is not bad for fire - who wouldn't love to get huge combustion?, but again as arcane spec, crit have more benefit for the spec and its playstyle
Now on frost im not quite sure already - the new mastery mechanic in 5.4, in my opinion, gave almost equal value to haste and mastery, and there is some minor crit softcap due shatter and how most procs work for frost. (again smell of stronk frost favorism )

I am not really sure how it was during WotLK, but my wild guess is that crit and haste had equal value for all specs.
With adding of the mastery and mastery stat, how each spec benefit from his mastery, and also the addition of reforging, all that crapadoodle was further streghtened cuz you were now able to actualy stack your strogest stat, thus making it even more stronger and changing the playstyle of each spec.

I for once will be happy noam to ignore what stats are actualy on the gear and just roll for it for the basic reason it is just an upgrade. Not BiS, not better stats etc etc. So im really intrested to see how Blizzard will negate all that pile of crap that was piling since the last 3-4 years with "stronk" secondaries.

P.S. i just hope that problem dont transle on the tetriary stats

[Northem]

Yeah, we can both agree that Slow is better than some snare effects that frost has, if we do a 1-1 comparison. But, frost has not to choose a cc spell, it gets the whole package. So we have to compare cc arsenal vs cc arsenal rather than Slow vs Blizzard, for example. (I was not implying that, because frost has 6 ccs and arcane has 1, frost ccing's power is 600% better.)

Moreover, even if some frost's cc looks worse than SLow, 1-1, you do not have to forget that they all together compensate each other, the so called sinergy. Are your enemies temporarily immune to snare effects? You can use Freeze and DP, as arcane you are fucked. There are 2 melees chasing you? You can use FO/Freeze, as arcane you are fucked. Did your frost nova get dispelled? You can use Freeze, as arcane you are fucked. Is a healer casting a heal and your CS is on cd? You can use DP, as arcane, you are fucked, and so on.

Is Slow as good as Blizzard? Nope, Slow is actually much better, Blizzard is almost never used for its cc, pvp wise. Is Slow as good as Blizzard plus FB FBB FO DP Freeze? Not even remotely close.

In addition, Slow looks overrated on paper. You lose 1,5sec to use it, does no damage, and lasts 8sec. To achieve a 100% uptime on a target you lose 18,75% of your time doing nothing but applying it.
Slow in WoD will be castable on multi targets. Does it look op? To achieve a 100% uptime on 3 targets you have to spend 56,25% of your time doing nothing but applying it.

Snare effects haven't ever killed anyone. Who will kill your enemies if you spend so much time to do something that other specs can do passively while doing tons of damage too?

And, it is just a snare effect, so it has limited uses as all snare effects, slowing an elemental shaman that is spamming Lava Burst is not going to help you. Slowing an hunter is not going to help you. Slowing a warrior that does never move but just jumps/charges, on the top of the 50% snare effect passively applied (so, it kinda counters your slow) is not going to help you, and so on. There are lots of cases where pressing your Slow spell will have purely negative impact (you just waste 1 gcd).

As true as life itself.

In addition to the above, with the disappearance of skills as [Deep Freeze] for arcane mages ... how are we supposed to be competitive in PVP?
It's impossible!

Conclusion:

We need to enhance, improve and even redo again if necessary the [Slow] spell of the arcane mages.
It is urgently needed!

Currently in MoP [Slow] is a pretty useless spell, but in WoD it will be even worse: it will be pure garbage.

I have several suggestions to improve [Slow] and turn it into one of the flagships of the arcane mages (at least in what is referred to PVP), but since it is forbidden to propose suggestions here, I'll leave it in the hands of Blizzard, although presumably they won't do anything about it...

The arcane mages in WoD are doomed!

[Frost1129]

Aside all that speculations about perks, spell chaganges, tallents and basicaly everything im more eager to see actualy that part.
From my point of view
crit is not that bad stat for arcane - hell i love when my blast or barrage crit for 1mln+... hell its a beatifll sight, but its just mastery give way more benefit for its playstyle.
mastery is not bad for fire - who wouldn't love to get huge combustion?, but again as arcane spec, crit have more benefit for the spec and its playstyle
Now on frost im not quite sure already - the new mastery mechanic in 5.4, in my opinion, gave almost equal value to haste and mastery, and there is some minor crit softcap due shatter and how most procs work for frost. (again smell of stronk frost favorism )

I am not really sure how it was during WotLK, but my wild guess is that crit and haste had equal value for all specs.
With adding of the mastery and mastery stat, how each spec benefit from his mastery, and also the addition of reforging, all that crapadoodle was further streghtened cuz you were now able to actualy stack your strogest stat, thus making it even more stronger and changing the playstyle of each spec.

I for once will be happy noam to ignore what stats are actualy on the gear and just roll for it for the basic reason it is just an upgrade. Not BiS, not better stats etc etc. So im really intrested to see how Blizzard will negate all that pile of crap that was piling since the last 3-4 years with "stronk" secondaries.

P.S. i just hope that problem dont transle on the tetriary stats

Well have to wait for beta to see how the stats work out. They are saying they still want stats to be about 10-20% different from each other in terms of DPS value for a spec (Source=Celestalon during FinalBoss interview). That could mean that switching from a fire heavy gear set will result in 10-20% less DPS as Arcane/Frost, which during early progression is really bad.

[Alroxas]

There are lots of cases where pressing your Slow spell will have purely negative impact (you just waste 1 gcd).

Wait is the Glyph of Slow being removed in WoD? The one where Arcane Blast also applies the affect of Slow?

- - - Updated - - -

In wod:
Gem sockets will not be as abundant as now so time wise it becomes easier to change. (cost wise depends on abundance of gems)
Reforging vanishes. So working out reforging between specs as well as the actual reforging time and cost vanishes.
Enchants cover less slots so easier to swap about. More choices too so it might be that crit/haste/mastery might not even be the best for any spec (same for gems)

So end of the day changing from 1 spec to another would be significantly less time consuming as it is now. Cost wise would depend on things we will not know for a long time. Some things might not even need changed depending on what gems and enchants end up being thrown into the mix. So potentially the only kicker might be in having the gear sets, although odds are half your items will be tier items anyway so half that problem is gone too.

Aside all that speculations about perks, spell chaganges, tallents and basicaly everything im more eager to see actualy that part.
From my point of view
crit is not that bad stat for arcane - hell i love when my blast or barrage crit for 1mln+... hell its a beatifll sight, but its just mastery give way more benefit for its playstyle.
mastery is not bad for fire - who wouldn't love to get huge combustion?, but again as arcane spec, crit have more benefit for the spec and its playstyle
Now on frost im not quite sure already - the new mastery mechanic in 5.4, in my opinion, gave almost equal value to haste and mastery, and there is some minor crit softcap due shatter and how most procs work for frost. (again smell of stronk frost favorism )

I am not really sure how it was during WotLK, but my wild guess is that crit and haste had equal value for all specs.
With adding of the mastery and mastery stat, how each spec benefit from his mastery, and also the addition of reforging, all that crapadoodle was further streghtened cuz you were now able to actualy stack your strogest stat, thus making it even more stronger and changing the playstyle of each spec.

I for once will be happy noam to ignore what stats are actualy on the gear and just roll for it for the basic reason it is just an upgrade. Not BiS, not better stats etc etc. So im really intrested to see how Blizzard will negate all that pile of crap that was piling since the last 3-4 years with "stronk" secondaries.

P.S. i just hope that problem dont transle on the tetriary stats

First, the removal of reforging means that you won't be able to transform bad upgrades to mediocre ones and will result in people [strike]searching[/strike] grinding for gear for tertiary stats (since secondaries are suppose to be a lot closer in value to each other). Of the four mentioned tertiary stats (Movement Speed, Sturdiness, Life Steal, Avoidance) it seems that movement speed would probably be best for Mages. Sturdiness = No durability loss and Life steal wasn't that impressive in Mists so I can't see it being very good in Warlords (especially as Blizzard wanted Healers to heal). Avoidance might be ok as it reduces AoE damage passively, but from what we've seen with Evanscence (isn't that a band name?) and continued use of Ice Block, I don't think Mages really need it.

However, from the alpha patch notes we do see that enchanters can add secondary stats to rings, necks, and cloaks (total of 4 pieces). Moreover, I think those enchants won't be enchanter limited so there's a degree of stacking secondary stats (just not as much as before). From my math, it looks like an boost from +455 (+105 neck, +75/ring, and +200 cloak) -to +540 w/ 10% movement speed (+140 neck, +100/ring, +200 cloak) in secondary stats: Crit, Haste, Mastery, Multistrike, and Readiness (Armor and Spirit are omitted for obvious reasons).

Unfortunately it's hard to tell what impact these numbers have at lv 100 in the post item squish world...