[Mage-WoD] Mage Beta Discussion

[Deleted]

You have an old version of beta skada. Just update the addon.

Skada r570, 8th August 2014. This one?

[Puuhis]

More results, my highest ignite has so far been 40k. Highest ignite with combustion was ~33k and my combustion did 2.5 million damage into 3 targets in shattrath. Fire cleave is at the moment also pretty insane, since Living bomb gets passively spread to all targets around the target and the explosion does a lot of damage. Without the ignite bug I got ~10k ignites and my combustions did a bit under 300k damage, which is ok I guess?

[Alias Node]

the arcane tier 2set is retarded imo. Never in my testing so far have I had an issue with mana to ever justify using evocation. now to be forced to use it just seems bad design, especially when they still have it so it removes all your arcane charges when you use it.

[Shangalar]

the arcane tier 2set is retarded imo. Never in my testing so far have I had an issue with mana to ever justify using evocation. now to be forced to use it just seems bad design, especially when they still have it so it removes all your arcane charges when you use it.

Err. We're kind of possibly having a mana burn phase in WoD, after which using Evocation will give you a nice boost for the conserve phase. Things are still being tested of course, but that's how it looks like for now in some talent combinations.

[Deleted]

Seems like fire pvp is firmly in the toilet at this time on beta. The only thing going for the spec atm is decent mobility and cc, since damage is pretty much been pushed from crit pyros into ignite with shatter gone. And with no dispell protection the pressure is pretty much non existent.

Combustion is even weaker than it is on live purely as you simply cannot build up a decent ignite without very lucky rng with no shatter, and it just gets dispelled anyways. I understood why they did not want to give ignite dispell protection on live due to the way you could use alt time/deep/combustion to spam crit pyros into your targets which would build pretty high ignites so it would have been pretty op (even tho it double dipped off resilience). But this was the only thing that made fire mages viable, the ability to put out amazing burst if you knew how to set it up, which was tempered by offensive dispells.

I really don't get what they are trying to do with combustion in WoD, it was used two completely different ways in MoP, PVE for dps after a big ignite. PVP for the of the gcd direct damage/stun and forcing a HS proc with shatter for spam pyro combos during deep. If this spell is supposed to be fires "major" cooldown its about as much use right now as tits on a fish!!!

Im not sure if there is any other spec in the game that is so heavily counter by both offensive and defensive dispels?? And not that fire mages were super common last xpac in arena, mainly because frost was strong and far easier to play, but this xpac they will be rarer than chickens teeth and basically forced to play with an affliction lock to be even close to viable at decent rating, (maybe sp but VT dispell needs a serious buff, 3s horror is a fucking joke and no risk at at all)

[Deleted]

I cant help but think the cleave nerf for PC and Fire had something to do with Fire's T17 4pc after playing around with it and PC.

[Polarthief]

I cant help but think the cleave nerf for PC and Fire had something to do with Fire's T17 4pc after playing around with it and PC.

And yet they buff Frost to compensate with PC already overperforming and not Fire who will now underperform with PC (PC and Met were already VERY close). It really makes you wonder what the hell they're doing.

[Shangalar]

It's always been Blizzard's policy to balance pvp around one specialization per pure dps class and that spec has always been Frost for us. The other two sometimes accidentally work in pvp niches like Arcane in battlegrounds every other patch, but other than that there's almost no point even in getting upset about it anymore. Even the talents are basically "pve with one usable in pvp", not counting the cc tier that changes based on what you're up against or the level of pvp content. It's really tough to work it out, though, and with the dedication they gave to pve changes for MoP and WoD, I have a feeling that they'll be doing something spectacular to pvp balance/stats/something for the expansion after WoD.

[Deleted]

t Fire who will now underperform with PC (PC and Met were already VERY close).

w/o 4pc yeah. 4pc makes PC blow Meteor completely out of the water though. Thought I was just doing something horribly wrong with Meteor but god damn the damage from machine gunning guaranteed Pyro crits into PC for the full duration of the proc if you time it right is pants on head retarded.

[Polarthief]

It's always been Blizzard's policy to balance pvp around one specialization per pure dps class and that spec has always been Frost for us.

Except I don't see it in WoD. Removal of BF proccing from something that isn't hard-cast, loss of DoT, loss of DF; I just don't see Mages being viable in PvP outside of CC/Support and light damage unless your team can keep all attackers peeled off of you. We've gained so little and lost so much (in all specs, too), and I've yet to see the cleansing of melee. Also keep in mind that Blizzard chose Mages as their "mobile, squishy, caster". Removing bits of our mobility is basically removing the core components for keeping that philosophy. We have barely any self-healing (in the form of a terrible glyph and a 22% heal every 3m), so if we can't continuously keep up pressure on the move, what good are we exactly?

w/o 4pc yeah. 4pc makes PC blow Meteor completely out of the water though. Thought I was just doing something horribly wrong with Meteor but god damn the damage from machine gunning guaranteed Pyro crits into PC for the full duration of the proc if you time it right is pants on head retarded.

They should have realized having DPS-competing talents was a bad idea, especially when they made fun set bonuses that can interact with said talents. I don't see the 4P alone carrying PC when you can't cleave onto/off of it.

[Deleted]

I don't see the 4P alone carrying PC when you can't cleave onto/off of it.

I don't know man, just from personal testing the difference between it and even a good Meteor/Combustion combo is night and day. Just wait for the 4pc to proc, drop PC, spam Pyro's during the entire duration, collect phat deeps. I thought I was doing something wrong at first with Meteor, but the 4pc/PC combo just completely blows it out of the water and it's not nearly as dependent on RNG like the Meteor critting. 4pc proc rate is probably going to get a hefty nerf though so it might still be too early to tell.

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Also, to add on that Fire's T17 set bonuses feel like they should have been included with all the WoD changes for Fire baseline(as leveling perks or whatever). They manage to fill the gaping void that the spec had in the beta up until now.

[Polarthief]

<snip>

Alright, let's say PC is still great but only with T17 4P. Isn't that an absolute, clusterfuck, failure of a design philosophy though? That forces talents on you which isn't what the talents are meant to be. Meteor prior to 4P, PC post 4P. That's just... Man, Blizzard needs to stop being so hypocritical already.

[mrgreenthump]

-snip-

Yes it's fairly likely, but this should be the "Bring PvP back to the masses" expansion(at least it was that last Blizzcon). So I just don't see that happening if people are again forced into specs rather than being at least somewhat viable as any. I ain't designing the game though, so not my call.. Just saying it ain't really how I would do things.

[Polarthief]

Yes it's fairly likely, but this should be the "Bring PvP back to the masses" expansion.

"Mists of Pandaria is all about the Alliance vs Horde conflict (read: PvP) and we should see a massive revival of World PvP."

I've seen more PvP against my own faction because of Bloody Coins more than actual PvP.

Also, y'know, they didn't really think it through with Mages (so far). All we can do is hope since sending feedback doesn't seem to be effective.

[Deleted]

Yes it's fairly likely, but this should be the "Bring PvP back to the masses" expansion(at least it was that last Blizzcon). So I just don't see that happening if people are again forced into specs rather than being at least somewhat viable as any. I ain't designing the game though, so not my call.. Just saying it ain't really how I would do things.

This^

WoD was touted as the xpac to fix the cluster fuck that was pvp, ability pruning, removal of resil/pvp power, fixing of wide gear scaling deltas, condensing of DR categories, reduction in cc. Which they have achieved, but mainly at the cost of the core mechanics of a lot of the different class specs.

The removal of abilities for certain classes has completely changed the way they will have to approach the way they do damage, which is fine, but what they haven't done is analyze how easy these new methods are to counter with things like the current dispel system, so at decent rating these type of specs are worthless and have a very low rating ceiling.

All this is going to do is reduce the amount of viable specs above a certain rating and result in arena teams above the 2.2k bracket consisting only of the same classes/specs/comps.

Yes i could reroll and play frost for instance. but i hate the spec in pvp compared to fire. Last expac i mainly played 2s since our 3s partner became ill, and we were sitting at 2.1k as fire/disc, which for all of you that arena will know is a decent rating for 2s, and could not progress much further due to queuing in to hunter teams all the time, i tried to learn frost and still dropped rating, but not because of skill, i was just as competent, i just really hated the way the spec plays and always played better as fire.

It seems to me they have poured all their time into Ashran, where class balance doesn't really matter since its a free for all gang fuck, and not taken the time to really look at how some specs will perform in the real pvp instances like arena. They are going to end up pushing more people away due to lack of viability and frustration at broken mechanics.....................but hey we got skirmishes back so everythings ok right???

[Polarthief]

WoD was touted as the xpac to fix the cluster fuck that was pvp, ability pruning, removal of resil/pvp power, fixing of wide gear scaling deltas, condensing of DR categories, reduction in cc. Which they have achieved, but mainly at the cost of the core mechanics of a lot of the different class specs.

Not only gimping mechanics and class toolkits but making Melee these unstoppable juggernauts as well.

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Btw, did anyone notice that Scorch is actually nearly 3x WEAKER than a non-FoF Ice Lance now?

Scorch: 25% of SP
Ice Lance: 33.5% of SP + ~350 base 72.36% of SP

[voltaa]

And scorch was hitting harder than soulfire in the last build, it's where it needs to be right now. Mobile casting shouldn't be taken lightly, having the best mobilty in the game has to come at a cost, and that cost is dps.

[Polarthief]

Mobile casting shouldn't be taken lightly, having the best mobilty in the game has to come at a cost, and that cost is dps.

And self-healing. That's pretty vital I'd say, and we specifically have very little of it because of our mobility. Cutting the DPS on it as well completely defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Ice Lance: 33.5% of SP + ~350 base

So should I point out that you're on live's Wowhead or...?

[Polarthief]

So should I point out that you're on live's Wowhead or...?

Y'know, I should have questioned when I saw it say "Quadruple damage against frozen targets". My apologies; Archeage was decompressing and eating nearly all my memory and bandwidth.

And this just proves my point even more. This makes Scorch be almost 3x weaker than Ice Lance now. Now we have a spammable instant dealing nearly 3x more damage than Scorch which is a cast time. Where exactly is the cost there, Voltaa? It's just fucking over an already-bad-in-PvP spec.