[Mage] Legion: General Information and Discussion

[Orrin]

I think they've realized niche design for the specs isn't very healthy when raiding is the primary end-game content. You would have to kind of hamstring the raid dev team and say " you must cater to all niches" to make it work decently well, and I don't think that's the right direction to move in. They've shown that they want to make our specs capable of doing multiple roles - I guess the only question is how successful they will be. The number of talent / artifact power combinations in Legion is going to be insane; balancing all of that will certainly be a feat to pull off.

There won't be combinations after a couple of months of Artifact leveling, you will just have all Artifact talent points filled out.

[Frost1129]

There won't be combinations after a couple of months of Artifact leveling, you will just have all Artifact talent points filled out.

Are there not slotted items that only power up certain nodes?

[Krazzorx]

There are but I think they are more "interesting" than anything. +1 rank to +3% per rank of fireball damage, not very impactful.

Difficulty of Balancing should be pretty normal.

[pleblius]

Isn't that what they're trying to do, though?

It's impossible to say whether the specs as they will be in Legion will be properly balanced yet. But if Blizzard wants to make single-speccing more viable than it is now (for pures), and that seems to be their goal, then I think they'll recognize that. I don't think we'll ever see a situation in which every spec has all the right tools for all the situations, and we shouldn't. Specs *should* have strengths and weaknesses, whether that's being mobile, or AOE, cleave, ST, etc. But I do agree that they shouldn't be so behind in their non-strengths that they become unviable.

That said, certainly for non-mythic, I've pretty much exclusively raided Frost and never found it to be completely unviable. That is, of course, not at the top levels which is radically different.

Right now, it does kind of look like it. My main point is that forcing us to spend 100g to switch specs is a dumb idea, because it's not going to change anything, merely punish people for being more versatile in their roles. (My guild's WW monk is pissed about it. Not that it's a ton of gold, just that it's stupid to charge any at all.) It's a step backward in game design.

I'm not against Blizzard fixing the problem. Like I said, I would love to never have to swap specs. And I also support non-linear balancing, where each spec does have meaningful strengths and weaknesses, as long as they actually balance it so it's worth being any of the specs. I also don't have a problem with the way they're doing artifacts.

[Imnick]

Honestly, I feel there won't be much choice in relic slots. There can't be more than two per type per tier, and the item level difference will mean you won't want to equip ones from a previous tier.

[Deleted]

I'm convinced myself they won't restrict people into specs. Even if they do initially they will revert since the outcry would be high since it's now a core part of the game to offspec on any difficulty above normal/heroic raiding (even a very casual guild will have around half of the raid doing it). The hybrid advantages in conjunction with the indirect hybrid taxes make it a fair system anyway.

I don't think people are flocking to mages and locks anyway. It's more likely people flocked to hunters for conceptual reasons ("hunting"), let alone extreme hybrids like druid seem to get constant popularity as well and I doubt it's for conceptual reasons there.

Check the latest representation stats.

[Recom]

There won't be combinations after a couple of months of Artifact leveling, you will just have all Artifact talent points filled out.

That's true but the question still stands for the 1st raid since even harcore won't have unlocked everything by then, unless they do tune it around 1 month for "hardcores" lile they announced.

What I'm more concerned about is how they will tune talents on the same tier when everything is unlocked. For example the trait that makes Icy Veins increase your damage by 100% will make TV much stronger and possibly flat out better than the other 2 talents on the same row. I really hope it doesn't force us into 1 build for the entire expac..

[Deleted]

the question still stands for the 1st raid since even harcore won't have unlocked everything by then

A current assumption is that regardless of Tier number, the talents would be easily unlocked anyway, but the relics might be harder to be collected (every Tier). That would be important because the relics have a tremendous impact on DPS via the ilevel they add because it adds a significant amount of Spell Power. I personally though believe they won't go too far with it or not eventually, as I describe above.

[Zelendria]

That's true but the question still stands for the 1st raid since even harcore won't have unlocked everything by then, unless they do tune it around 1 month for "hardcores" lile they announced.

What I'm more concerned about is how they will tune talents on the same tier when everything is unlocked. For example the trait that makes Icy Veins increase your damage by 100% will make TV much stronger and possibly flat out better than the other 2 talents on the same row. I really hope it doesn't force us into 1 build for the entire expac..

World first guilds might have a player with 3 Mages being levelled concurrently so that they don't end up with a weak spec.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

A current assumption is that regardless of Tier number, the talents would be easily unlocked anyway, but the relics might be harder to be collected (every Tier). That would be important because the relics have a tremendous impact on DPS via the ilevel they add because it adds a significant amount of Spell Power. I personally though believe they won't go too far with it or not eventually, as I describe above.

Mildly curious as to why you're collecting relics? They work like gems, not like glyphs; there is no recovery of the old one you're replacing.

[Imnick]

I know we have little else to talk about right now, but honestly as it has never been mentioned by Blizzard (in fact they implied it will remain free) I think the gold cost per spec change thing is just something they are testing out in the Alpha and it's going to disappear with as much fanfare as it appeared.

[Deleted]

I don't mind much about losing 100g each time myself but it sounds like they'll revert it due to the outcry. The worst message about it is that they may be trying to force people to not switch specs. That's not good game design, they should stay on specs because they like them.

[gallamann]

That said, certainly for non-mythic, I've pretty much exclusively raided Frost and never found it to be completely unviable. That is, of course, not at the top levels which is radically different.

As someone who enjoys Frost and completed all heroic encounters in WoD raiding, I can tell you Frost was unviable in BRF, you literally could not even beat fire on the one cleave fight (Hans & Franz) in the place.

Now I would say the same about HFC and Fire.

That is what Blizzard has to become much more nimble about addressing when a tier begins, so as to not leave any spec of a pure class inferior.

[thsevecha]

To be honest I'd REALLY hate it if they were to charge us 100g each time we changed specs. Forget about raid comps and min mazing. I'm talking about having fun here. Sometimes I like to change specs several times a day just to play something different. That would ruin it for me cause I wouldn't be able to do that. Sometimes i like to do a BG as Frost and when it's over I join it as Arcane...

[Polarthief]

To be honest I'd REALLY hate it if they were to charge us 100g each time we changed specs. Forget about raid comps and min mazing. I'm talking about having fun here. Sometimes I like to change specs several times a day just to play something different. That would ruin it for me cause I wouldn't be able to do that. Sometimes i like to do a BG as Frost and when it's over I join it as Arcane...

Exactly, especially in an expansion where spec identity is actually a thing and they're making some specs very, very fun.

[Deleted]

especially in an expansion where spec identity is actually a thing

That's why they do it apparently. They consider that "identity' thing to go hand-in-hand with forcing the spec used to be the same. Or at least that's what most people perceive.

[Polarthief]

That's why they do it apparently. They consider that "identity' thing to go hand-in-hand with forcing the spec used to be the same. Or at least that's what most people perceive.

Which is retarded IMO.

"LOOK AT ALL THESE NEW TOYS! But you only get 33% of them without paying constantly to try the other 66%, as well as jumping through hoops so they'll be useful/all available."

^ That's the message I get from all this. The jumping through hoops part (Artifact leveling) is enough of a hurdle for your off-specs. We shouldn't also have a gold-wall too for something like this, especially when it's been free for a long time now. I'll gladly pay a ONE TIME fee of 100g per spec to have them as "unlocked" specs, similar to dual-specialization on live, but this new system is so stupid, especially when they played it off like we'll have tri-spec just like live's version.

[AngelovV]

"LOOK AT ALL THESE NEW TOYS! But you only get 33% of them without paying constantly to try the other 66%, as well as jumping through hoops so they'll be useful/all available."

[/B][/U]

Did you like it more the way Cata did it? The raid group farming the legendary for one person only? (I had no problem with this though, but the majority of players did). Or you liked it more the way MoP did it? Farming a different piece (which you had to throw away at some point) every patch and then you got the ultimate legendary item at the end?

I personaly think that the way they do it now suits the playerbase more than the previous legendaries. If you have a better solution feel free to share it.

[KurenaiXIII]

As someone who enjoys Frost and completed all heroic encounters in WoD raiding, I can tell you Frost was unviable in BRF, you literally could not even beat fire on the one cleave fight (Hans & Franz) in the place.

Now I would say the same about HFC and Fire.

That is what Blizzard has to become much more nimble about addressing when a tier begins, so as to not leave any spec of a pure class inferior.

I definitely played Frost on Hand and Franz and didn't experience any problems. Of course, I was and largely am the only raiding mage in my guild so I don't have any direct comparisons to be made. But under the metric of 'did we beat the fight and did I contribute meaningfully', I considered Frost viable.

[AngelovV]

Frost was good right at the start of BRF, because you had HM pieces with multistrike, but once you got some BRF gear Arcane pulled ahead on every ST fight and Fire on every cleave fight. So yeah, frost in BRF was the worst spec.