Mage Slow

[Diraunta]

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=31589

15 seconds, from my experience, is wayyy more than enough time for a well-played mage to kill someone in PvP.

I am aware priests and paladins can dispel it, yes, but it seems a little ridiculous that one move, spammable, ranged, and instant-cast, could render many other classes useless, often in more ways than one.
I play a shaman (all specs) and grounding totem, believe it or not, is pretty hard to eat up a slow with on an 11.5 second cooldown (at the lowest) while an arcane mage is jumping in circles spamming instant cast moves (making Earth Shock effectively useless) and /lols.

I hear equally strong complaints from friends who play other classes about it being, well, a RIDICULOUSLY overpowered ability.

Just wanted to hear some opinions/arguments from other classes, is the Mage ability "Slow" overpowered? Or maybe it's just the Arcane tree, or maybe I'm just doing something wrong.

And I fully expect 5+ mages to come and comment that it's perfectly fine. But if you're going to say it's fine, or even underpowered, please tell me why you think so.

[218over]

lol, I never thought there would ever be a QQ thread about the mage slow... to call it "ridiculously overpowered" is hilarious ^^

[Baever]

Slow was one of the most unworthy 41-point talents of all TBC.

This happens to be the first post I have ever read about it being 'over-powered.'

[Pyrostemplar]

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=31589

15 seconds, from my experience, is wayyy more than enough time for a well-played mage to kill someone in PvP.

I am aware priests and paladins can dispel it, yes, but it seems a little ridiculous that one move, spammable, ranged, and instant-cast, could render many other classes useless, often in more ways than one.
I play a shaman (all specs) and grounding totem, believe it or not, is pretty hard to eat up a slow with on an 11.5 second cooldown (at the lowest) while an arcane mage is jumping in circles spamming instant cast moves (making Earth Shock effectively useless) and /lols.

I hear equally strong complaints from friends who play other classes about it being, well, a RIDICULOUSLY overpowered ability.

Just wanted to hear some opinions/arguments from other classes, is the Mage ability "Slow" overpowered? Or maybe it's just the Arcane tree, or maybe I'm just doing something wrong.

And I fully expect 5+ mages to come and comment that it's perfectly fine. But if you're going to say it's fine, or even underpowered, please tell me why you think so.

Arcane mages have had slow since TBC launch. Have you seen many of them?

Slow may be good in PVP but it is deeep into the arcane tree. It is quite expensive mana-wise and was also considered the most useless 41 pointer of all mage specs. So while you can spam it, you don't have many other survival skills. Also of notice, arcane is a rather dangerous spec to play at pvp until Abr came - getting the school locked down was a big no (blink is in the arcane tree).

Concluding, arcane mages may seen OP in PVP atm, but it was always a bursty spec (remember the 3 minute mage?), with some structural frailties that will shine when the HP increase at lvl 80.

TBQH I'm still not too keen on slow, and don't expect to see many arcane mages PVP'ing, at least compared to frosties.

[Pledge]

well it's definitely OP at 70 against shaman. you pretty much are fk'd against an arcane mage unless there is another healer around. at 80 picture it as our version of MS in a way. without slow arcane mages would go oom against healers.

as for grounding totem. personally i use slow to eat it because of it's low mana cost and instant-application that destroys it. it's far more superior to ice lance that has a travel time for this job.

arcane also lacks the snares and roots of frost and this helps make up for it. imagine if arcane didn't have this ability and only had frost nova on a 25s cd. there would be no way (on top of the CoT effect) for arcane to stop a healer for LoSing us for an eternity.

[218over]

well it's definitely OP at 70 against shaman.

It's not OP; it's a counter. When the enhancer reaches us WE are pretty much fucked, so it's just fair.

[Tails]

It's not OP; it's a counter. When the enhancer reaches us WE are pretty much fucked, so it's just fair.

No no, that's when you actually iceblock and wait for blink cooldown, so no you are not fucked. Slow was not OP in TBC because of insanely high mana cost, now they lowered it and it's really OP if you can't dispel it. Sorry.

[Minlow]

Game isn't centered around duels, get someone who can cleanse if it bothers you that much.


Slow is far from "OP".

[Mictain]

Slow, in my mind, is close to a balanced in comparison to other equal tier talents. However, with it's new lower mana cost, it has become spammable which posses a few problems.
1) The mage doesn't have to worry as much about ti being dispell as it did in TBC, not to mention if specced it has a 30% chance to resit dispell.
2) It lasts 15 sec. Remember when curse of tongues laster 45 sec in pvp, they chnaged that to 10 so anyone affected who couldn't dispell wasn't screwed. The 15 second duration could really mess up a healer.

1 really isn't an issue to me, feel free to spam it if it gets dispelled; your jsut hurting your damage. 2 however is kinda brutal. It should be brought down to 10 sec in PvP to match similar effects.

[aeluna]

shamans suck at pvp right now. one of the most frustrating classes to play in my opinion. enhance is the only viable PvP spec until things get sorted out with the expansion. healing we're equivelent to a gimp'd druid and elemental, well, other than thunderstorm, that spec is frustrating as hell with long cast times, los issues, basically fighting against any semi intelligent player = death.

i know how you feel with the mage slow, it blows, but so does playing a shammy right now in PvP. my suggestion, just chain run av's if your farming honor, otherwise, pickup a new hobby till wotlk.

[Beaavis]

Slow is very powerful. Most classes have to burn a trinket to get out of it,, even Mages. The only reason its balanced is because of its placement in the trees and the extreme mana cost for casting each and every Slow.

I kill most Shaman i run into tho more than most other classes these days as a Mage, and i'm not even Slow/Arc spec'd. You are one of the easier classes for me to counter generally. Only the occasional well played resto shaman are hard. I love spellstealing earth shield too since it literally keeps my HP's at full for every occasional scrap i get into. Shaman + Earth shield FTW!

[Dinamic]

Slow is pretty great in bgs and 1v1 scenerios, but it loses a lot of its luster in organized group pvp.

[greenmasheen]

never the less, arcane mages and to a lesser extent frost mages, need to be nerfed.

-on a side note, arcane was never really a great tree by itself for pvp, i agree that having some viability would be nice but no one better complain about its pve viability pre 3.0. i specced arcane and was doing generous amounts of damage in raiding.

[Tombfyre]

Slow was a horrible cap for a tree, but without it being the focal talent of a tree and moving to more of a supporting role, it became very very good.

[asakuj]

Slow is very powerful. Most classes have to burn a trinket to get out of it,, even Mages. The only reason its balanced is because of its placement in the trees and the extreme mana cost for casting each and every Slow.

I kill most Shaman i run into tho more than most other classes these days as a Mage, and i'm not even Slow/Arc spec'd. You are one of the easier classes for me to counter generally. Only the occasional well played resto shaman are hard. I love spellstealing earth shield too since it literally keeps my HP's at full for every occasional scrap i get into. Shaman + Earth shield FTW!

Hehe.. you didnt pwn ANY Resto Shamans before the patch. The reason I know this from is that you think normal shammies let you keep the rank 1 earth shield you stole from them with 900 mana.. Shaman haz purge. Scrub.

[Dinamic]

never the less, arcane mages and to a lesser extent frost mages, need to be nerfed.

-on a side note, arcane was never really a great tree by itself for pvp, i agree that having some viability would be nice but no one better complain about its pve viability pre 3.0. i specced arcane and was doing generous amounts of damage in raiding.

Blizzard may nerf a little bit of arcane barrage's damage, but that will be it. There was already a blue post about arcane barrage doing too much damage. Blizzard said instead of nerfing it, they're probably going to make a change to arcane blast.

[Tombfyre]

Something about moving some of barrage's damage to blast if I remember correctly. It will hopefully keep mages balanced for pve, and bring them to balanced levels for pvp where more mobility is needed.

[Beaavis]

Hehe.. you didnt pwn ANY Resto Shamans before the patch. The reason I know this from is that you think normal shammies let you keep the rank 1 earth shield you stole from them with 900 mana.. Shaman haz purge. Scrub.

Yeah but most of them die before they purge me. This is in multi PvP btw, not dueling. They aren't using r1 shield unless its a duel or something along those lines expecting to be dispeled or stolen since that r1 isn't helping them much.

Even resto shaman don't scare me unless they are very well played/geared. I just have to make sure to icelance before CS and get my burst it and its usually Game Over. Shaman by and large the least of my worries out of all classes right now tbh.

[velourea]

people noticing [slow] now arcane is popular? who could have thought....

[Mictain]

Well obviously were noticing it now since almost every mage went arcane, but thats not the problem. Slow was okay in BC, just had a steep mana cost which was dealt with. The problem is how slow works with the new tiers of arcane. Essentially, slow meant good kitting, but you still had to cast/channel. Now arcane mages really don't ever have to cast a real spell in PvP; so while the target is slowed, they are free to nuke the target without worries of getting nailed by a ES/CS/Spell Lock (outside CS and spelllocks normal 4 sec silence).

In short, slow alone isn't OP, it's how it works with the rest of the tree. Good synergy true, but good synergy does not equal balance.