WOD Evocation Question

[Deleted]

Compared to other classes, we still have it quite good.

Inside raids yea, self-healing doesn't matter in raids anyway because there are dedicated healers to heal you, but outside of that Mages are one of the worst classes.
Almost all non-raid content is solo content, and that's where WoD Mages are unviable, especially during the first patch, when most mobs are hitting like trucks.
No self-healing combined with no burst capability (removal of Evocation healing and AT's buff snapshotting) is gonna kill the ability to play Mages outside raids and dungeons. Timeless Isle with a 496 geared Mage will become impossible in WoD, unless you group with a dedicated healer.

[Raugnaut]

If I recall correctly, for mana regeneration values, Arcane has an increased 400% mana regen rate compared to everyone else. Baseline mana regen rate in WoD is .8% mana per second, going down to .4% mana per second. Arcane will regen 4% of the mana per second at lvl 90, and 2% of their mana per second at lvl 100 if I recall correctly. (theorycrafting thread, may be innacurate, but its pretty high.)

Evocation, already answered, stays in for Arcane, gone for Fire/Frost.

[Polarthief]

Are you intentionally being dense or something for the sake of arguing? AT and MI are not self utility in raids - they are both DPS cooldowns.

Then I'm not sure what other "utility" you're referring to. Also, AT is no longer a DPS cooldown; I'm talking from a MoP==>WoD standpoint.

Also, there's no need to get so hostile.

When did we go from "some of the best, if not the best, personal defensives" to "we don't have the means to block damage"? Because we lost TS?

Don't put words in my mouth. Never said we don't have the means to block at all, just that we're losing quite a bit with TS and AT becoming a talent. I also completely forgot about GI for some reason when I made that post, so excuse me for that.

Why would you ever exclude IF?

Because it's a talent, and picking the other two means you don't have that mobility. Arcane stays at the least mobile thing ever without it, and just eeks above Shadow Priest with it. I'm just looking on both sides of the coin.

It's there for a reason - to make you more mobile, and it does it's job well. FoF charges (which are basically on demand with water jet) and IF make Frost highly mobile, Arcane still has some mobility but not the best. Compared to other classes, we still have it quite good.

*Shrug* Honestly (like I said before), I forgot about GI (due to not playing Mage in awhile), which makes me agree a bit more than when I posted that original post. If we didn't have GI, I'd continue to argue that we don't have it all that great still.

- - - Updated - - -

Inside raids yea, self-healing doesn't matter in raids anyway because there are dedicated healers to heal you, but outside of that Mages are one of the worst classes.
Almost all non-raid content is solo content, and that's where WoD Mages are unviable, especially during the first patch, when most mobs are hitting like trucks.
No self-healing combined with no burst capability (removal of Evocation healing and AT's buff snapshotting) is gonna kill the ability to play Mages outside raids and dungeons. Timeless Isle with a 496 geared Mage will become impossible in WoD, unless you group with a dedicated healer.

This too is why I feel like we don't have it AS good as you think, Frost.

[gaymer77]

Evocation also interacts with Arcane Charges in WoD, it consumes charges for higher mana regen.

Um it already does that...

[Pyromelter]

I really really hope arcane rotation isn't going back to Cata burn/conserve gameplay. From my point of view this is a big concern, because i don't want to go back to old gameplay style, especially the one from 2 expansions ago. Now don't get me wrong. Burn phases were fun 3 (three!) years years ago and i'm not gonna be happy if i have to repeat an old play style, even the easy dumb one from WotLK where we were the 2 button spec.

Cata burn/conserve took some skill (although polarthief and I disagree mightily on the use of evocation and skill interaction in the context of a raid).

I just find it interesting that you don't want gameplay from cata, which was really the most fun arcane has even been, as opposed to trying to stay at 100% mana standing in a root. Part of the fun of arcane was blasting huge dps numbers at the expense of your mana, then doing no dps while evocating, to then conserving, and then unloading again.

It's the difference between sprinting hard then taking a walk, or evenly jogging. For arcane, I'll take the hard sprints, thank you.

Something tells me though it will be an even jog. The problem with the hard sprints is that too much burst damage can mess up raid encounter design by bursting adds too quickly. Blizz has shown a penchant for nerfing PvE burst due to these types of issues in the past.

[Polarthief]

Cata burn/conserve took some skill (although polarthief and I disagree mightily on the use of evocation and skill interaction in the context of a raid).

I just find it interesting that you don't want gameplay from cata, which was really the most fun arcane has even been, as opposed to trying to stay at 100% mana standing in a root. Part of the fun of arcane was blasting huge dps numbers at the expense of your mana, then doing no dps while evocating, to then conserving, and then unloading again.

It's the difference between sprinting hard then taking a walk, or evenly jogging. For arcane, I'll take the hard sprints, thank you.

Something tells me though it will be an even jog. The problem with the hard sprints is that too much burst damage can mess up raid encounter design by bursting adds too quickly. Blizz has shown a penchant for nerfing PvE burst due to these types of issues in the past.

Skill or not, there is nothing enjoyable about Arcane in MoP (at least, imo), and it's even worse with Rune of Power. Even though I didn't want to be Arcane in Cata (and was forced because Fire was pretty shit until DS), it was definitely more enjoyable than it is today. Also having hard-hitting ABLs was my favorite part about Arcane, which also made it a really hilarious spec to use in PvP: Kill immediately or be killed, and it worked for the most part in low-skill arenas, haha.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Inside raids yea, self-healing doesn't matter in raids anyway because there are dedicated healers to heal you, but outside of that Mages are one of the worst classes.
Almost all non-raid content is solo content, and that's where WoD Mages are unviable, especially during the first patch, when most mobs are hitting like trucks.
No self-healing combined with no burst capability (removal of Evocation healing and AT's buff snapshotting) is gonna kill the ability to play Mages outside raids and dungeons. Timeless Isle with a 496 geared Mage will become impossible in WoD, unless you group with a dedicated healer.

Are we playing the same game? Really? I can take down the L100 elites with 2.5m health wandering around at 92 in ~508 quest gear. I'm convinced we're not playing the same game and would like to direct you to the proper forum.

[Tergeron]

[snip]

as opposed to trying to stay at 100% mana standing in a root.

That is a gross simplification of what high end Arcane gameplay is like at the moment, especially when you consider the way T16 4pc changes how you play the spec. It involves a lot of 2pc Arcane blast and Arcane missile weaving while utilizing your missile procs from multidotting or 4pc procs. This doesn't discuss what you do around cd timings with alter time/trinkets as well. RoP is a trade off for all of the diversity that an arcane mage can bring to the table and it requires planning ahead of time to optimize your gameplay. Some fights in SoO aren't really capable of being planned for with regards to rune placement but that is the trade off of the spec and ultimately that quick thinking on rune placement is what differentiates a good arcane mage from a great one.

I did cata burn/conserve and I find the current MoP gameplay of Arcane to be much more compelling than what cata brought to the table because we still kept the cooldown management with alter time whilst having multi-dotting capabilities. We have what feels like a very diverse skill set for almost any situation and we're losing all of that in WoD. And for what? Spec identity at the expense of the classes baseline utility? I feel like the class identity is being lost in the desire to force specs into pure arcane/frost/fire roles. Personally I dislike where things are heading for mages.

[Deleted]

Are we playing the same game? Really? I can take down the L100 elites with 2.5m health wandering around at 92 in ~508 quest gear. I'm convinced we're not playing the same game and would like to direct you to the proper forum.

can you kill 10 of these elites in the row without taking any break as the most of other classes? if yes, than we have some hidden potential

[Kuni Zyrekai]

can you kill 10 of these elites in the row without taking any break as the most of other classes? if yes, than we have some hidden potential

Sure, 20 minute kills, most CDs are back up. Not entirely sure why you would want to kill ten of them, but sure. Doable.

[Imnick]

Mages have literally never been bad at solo content, they weren't bad at soloing before Mirror Image and Alter Time were added to the game, they weren't bad at soloing despite the fact that we've never had any self healing, and ice barrier absorbs more damage than temporal shield anyway and we still have it (and we were good at soloing even when it was exclusive to frost).
We're not "losing" Alter Time as a utility cooldown when we've never had it as one, and why anyone's factoring two three-minute cooldowns into soloing if sitting and eating is barred is a mystery to me, how slow do you do the timeless isle?

Saying that mages are "one of the worst classes" outside of raids is just patently fucking ridiculous. It's never been true and none of these changes are going to make it true.
Did you mean to write "the Mage community is one of the worst class's"? I can definitely agree with that. Can't we go one week without someone inventing a reason that the sky is falling?

[Shangalar]

Maybe they're just frustrated because they put a bomb on the target and then they can't time Deep Freeze well because the bomb breaks frost nova, leading to the conclusion that we suck because they have no more ways to avoid damage

If you have something more to discuss, please stay on topic, which is Evocation. Or I can change the thread title to mage sustain in wod.

[Imnick]

Frostjaw > Living Bomb > Deep Freeze always served me pretty well as an opener against a single target, soloing is where those useless pvp talents start to become useful

I don't think there is anything more to say about evocation though, the first post was a fairly simple question that was answered fast.
The only other things we could say relevant to evocating would be to talk about the Arcane rotation, which has its own topic already and which we really also can't say that much about without access to a character with full perks.
If you don't want to rename the topic I'd maybe suggest locking it

[Shangalar]

Suggestion hastily considered over a sip of coffee. Locking thread. If other people wish to continue discussing something relevant to this thread, please send me a PM and I will happily reopen it, probably over another sip of coffee.