Are you really that scared for your mage?

[Rivellana]

Yes, I'm a bit concerned.

It looks like they did another balancing pass for beta...looking at the numbers this morning I see small blanket nerfs to some frost numbers (in the name of balancing, I'm not sure I'm surprised about this, they sounded amazing in PvE).

That doesn't concern me as much as the way they sound in PvP right now though. I picked up my mage pretty late this expansion and just fell in love with it, and am all ready to make it my main. That being said, I love PvP and I've only heard frightening things about melee dominating and survivability being worse than ever.

[Deleted]

Yes, I'm a bit concerned.

It looks like they did another balancing pass for beta...looking at the numbers this morning I see small blanket nerfs to some frost numbers (in the name of balancing, I'm not sure I'm surprised about this, they sounded amazing in PvE).

That doesn't concern me as much as the way they sound in PvP right now though. I picked up my mage pretty late this expansion and just fell in love with it, and am all ready to make it my main. That being said, I love PvP and I've only heard frightening things about melee dominating and survivability being worse than ever.

The mage is not even in the worst of spots when it comes to being ranged and fighting melee in WoD. I really hope they at least try to balance things a bit and not get at the point, as in every last expansion, to hotfix a bunch of stuff, that should have been fixed during beta, in the first 2 weeks of WoD.

[RuneDK]

Hello.

Reading through all the forums, I see a lot of scepticalism, and well-deserved ofc!
All classes are going through major changes, and it can be a bit intimidating to see your class
being stripped of something, that you saw as iconic for your class.

But the mage is a dps, with not less than three dps specs. Even though a lot of changes are hitting the mage,
don't you guys belive that the mage will always be dominating? Arcane is shit? Go fire/frost. Oh, fire just got nerfed? Frost it is then! etc. etc.

If you had ONE dps spec, I could understand why people are so scared. But you got three choices. Among one of those, is a top-3 spec.

The mage has been strong in every patch, in every expansion. Because of this trinity of destruction.

So all I'm asking is... aren't you guys looking forwards to kick ass yet again, in another world?

The bolded sentence is not true. Most of TBC, aside from having 2 pc T5 and two to three shadow priests and a specific meta gem, mages in PvE content were complete shit. However since then, mages have been a top tier class. They will continue that trend in WoD, and I see zero reason to complain.

[mrgreenthump]

However since then, mages have been a top tier class.

First tier of Cata was also pretty dog for us. And there were points in Wrath too that Mages were a bit less desired(though Wrath overall was pretty nice for Mages). But overall it's been proven quite a lot of times that it's hard for a pure class to be really bad on all 3 specs unless that's the intentional, and well Mage is THE ranged caster, so them not having at least 1 good spec would be kinda weird.

[Debased]

I cannot see how debating about when mages were strong and weak has any relevance, and I see it all the time in these forums. Anyways I don't raid on my mage or as any DPS spec for that matter, but I do PvP and from the looks of it I am still quite concerned. Frost damage may be strong but that's hardly useful when you can't set up a combo because Deep Freeze breaks now. Fire and Arcane still look completely irrelevant in PvP. Sure you can play them, but you'd really be just negatively impacting yourself and your team on any higher level, and that's really my issue. I don't like having a one-trick pony as my main. I could play my druid and both balance and resto would be viable, or my warlock where demo and afflic look viable.

[Deleted]

Looking at the buffs/nerfs today, i am actually more pleased, the figures appear to be closing the specs togethor, so theoretically all 3 are viable. And thats what I want, i can roll any of them at any time and have a laugh, or roll specific and nuke in raids.

PvP = meh for me so I am not too concerned playing on a carebear realm, and outside of the legendary quest having to interface with horde or arena.

[Polarthief]

PvP = meh for me so I am not too concerned playing on a carebear realm, and outside of the legendary quest having to interface with horde or arena.

Except that's just ignoring half the game/all players on a PvP realm. This will be my first expansion leveling on forced PvP and I can't say I'm less than frightened as a gimped-for-PvP class.

[Terahertz]

I cannot see how debating about when mages were strong and weak has any relevance, and I see it all the time in these forums. Anyways I don't raid on my mage or as any DPS spec for that matter, but I do PvP and from the looks of it I am still quite concerned. Frost damage may be strong but that's hardly useful when you can't set up a combo because Deep Freeze breaks now. Fire and Arcane still look completely irrelevant in PvP. Sure you can play them, but you'd really be just negatively impacting yourself and your team on any higher level, and that's really my issue. I don't like having a one-trick pony as my main. I could play my druid and both balance and resto would be viable, or my warlock where demo and afflic look viable.

The thing that bugs me the most is that this nerf barely does anything anyways besides screw up Frost Mages outside of arena as it was already mostly used for CC rather than damage. At least on PTR it basically breaks on any damage, even my welly's damage. I seriously hope they'll revert that nerf.

Also what's bugging me is the fact how so stuff like dragon's breath apparently DRs polymorph? Heck, even Ice Nova DRs with polymorph for some freakish reason...

[HardlyWaken]

Fire looks pretty good to me.

So does arcane.

Frost is in the best position, none of the specs are in a bad position though.

Edit: fixed links

that just makes me hope they buff up Comet Storm a little bit. It's awesome looking. Not that it's so far under that's it's game breaking, would be cool if they boosted it a bit. Not a huge fan of the crystal.

[lunchbox2042]

Blizzard seems to be pushing everyone to be mage this expansion.

[Deleted]

Blizzard seems to be pushing everyone to be frost mage this expansion.

Fixed that for you.

[Scrilian]

Fixed that for you.

Like new fire is any good. I miss alter-pyro spam.

[voltaa]

Fixed that for you.

Except if you paid attention to the numbers you would see that isn't true at all. Things change day to day, just because one thing is OP or UP today doesn't mean it can't be the exact opposite the next day, prime example is Frost and Arcane which have switched places over the course of one build.

People are putting too much stock in what's current rather than looking to what is coming.

[Deleted]

Forced pvp zone = clear it as quick as possible and never return, and if forced to play it all the time I will cancel my sub.

I could handle having to do 2 BGs to get the legendary done, but it should not be up to the game designers to decide where you should play when you are max level and whether it should be pve or pvp, that choice should be left to the players to decide.

Still on the plus side, it would save me £10 a month, down side not really any other game out there that I enjoy playing as much as wow currently.

[pkm]

People are putting too much stock in what's current rather than looking to what is coming.

Every expansion launch the forums are pretty much like this.

Then on when the expansion hits its something completely different.

[Mountain Called Monkey]

Kinda, I only played a mage in 5.4 and I really enjoyed the control, mobility, and damage of frost. Sadly it looks like a few of those aspects are going away in WoD as things swing more toward the traditional style of Mage. That being said I haven't had a chance to test my mage in WoD and the PTR gave me some hope that frost won't be as clunky as I first thought. Just have to wait and see when 6.0 comes out

[Kastiel]

Not at all.

I have been playing my Arcane Mage since Vanilla. I have seen patches come and go with all of their nerfs/buffs. I've seen the scales tip both in our favor and against us, yet I've always been able to adapt and overcome. I have always been viable in raids, regardless of whether or not the current patch crippled us.

To be honest, I enjoy the changes. It keeps things fresh. It keeps me on my toes. If everything stayed the same or remained bland without any sort of nerf to make me sweat, then I'd grow bored and complacent. I'd derive no fun in playing my Mage anymore. So bring on the changes as I'm looking forward to figuring out ways to exploit the developers.

[Debased]

Not at all.

I have been playing my Arcane Mage since Vanilla. I have seen patches come and go with all of their nerfs/buffs. I've seen the scales tip both in our favor and against us, yet I've always been able to adapt and overcome. I have always been viable in raids, regardless of whether or not the current patch crippled us.

To be honest, I enjoy the changes. It keeps things fresh. It keeps me on my toes. If everything stayed the same or remained bland without any sort of nerf to make me sweat, then I'd grow bored and complacent. I'd derive no fun in playing my Mage anymore. So bring on the changes as I'm looking forward to figuring out ways to exploit the developers.

But frost is better.

[Kastiel]

But frost is better.

It's all relative

Personal preferences will always be better. If you don't play the spec you love, you won't maximize your damage output. I despise frost, and I know that I could learn to play it and master it, but I would hate it the entire time, and my damage would suffer because of it.

Say, for instance, there are 2 Arcane Mages. Patch X.X comes out and they nerf Arcane and Buff frost. Player A hates it, but switches to Frost anyway because "SimC numbers are higher". Player B remains Arcane. Depending on the nerf (realistically it's not like a nerf will be Arcane does 10000% less dps, usually it's intricate numbers), Player B could usually out-perform Player A, regardless of nerf simply because he/she loves the spec and gameplay.

Sure, there will always be players who can out-perform other regardless of spec/nerf/buff. I'm just portraying my experiences. SimC numbers are great to show you potential numbers in perfect situations, but it really all boils down to RNG and your ability to adapt and overcome shortcomings, personal and group mistakes, and the unknown.

As it stands, Blizzard is doing pretty well about balancing damage output between the specs. There's still more tuning to go, and there will be even more after WoD launches. I'm not at all worried about it.

[Sills]

I am a little nervous, although it's nothing new for a new patch. Until I get my hands on it and can play it myself on live I will not know what to expect numbers wise and in terms of "feel". I fell back in love with my frost mage in Mists (I've played one of the ENTIRE expansion and all 3 raid tiers) and I really hope that that love affair continues into WoD. Not knowing how things will turn out on live makes me nervous and itchy.