Cataclysm Mage Changes

[Knegoff]

Made this a temp sticky ~ chaud

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we’ll be making lots of changes and additions to class talents and abilities across the board. In this preview, you’ll get an early look at what's in store for the mage class, including a rundown of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the different talent specs.

New Mage Spells

Flame Orb (available at level 81): Inspired by Prince Taldaram’s abilities in Ahn'kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in front in a straight line, sending beams that cause fire damage to passing targets. Once it’s cast, the mage is free to begin casting other spells as the Flame Orb travels. While the spell will be useful to any spec, Fire mages will have talents that improve it, possibly causing the Flame Orb to explode when it reaches its destination.

Time Warp (level 83): Grants a passive Haste effect much like Bloodlust or Heroism to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the mage's own movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive with Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning you can’t benefit from both if you’ve got the Exhaustion debuff, though the movement-speed increase will still work even when under the effects of Exhaustion.

Wall of Fog (level 85): Creates a line of frost in front of the mage, 30 yards from end to end. Enemies who cross the line are snared and take damage. The mana cost will be designed to make Wall of Fog efficient against groups, not individuals. This spell is intended to give mages a way to help control the battlefield, whether the mage is damaging incoming enemies (Blizzard can be channeled on top of Wall of Fog) or protecting a flag in a Battleground. 10-second duration. 30-second cooldown.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to introducing new spells, we're planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you're familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

Arcane Missiles is being redesigned to become a proc-based spell. Whenever the mage does damage with any spell, there is a chance for Arcane Missiles to become available, similar to how the warrior’s Overpower works. The damage and mana cost of this spell will be reworked to make it very desirable to use when available. This change should make gameplay more dynamic for the mage, particularly at low levels.
We are planning to remove spells that don't have a clear purpose. Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward, and Frost Ward are being removed from the game, and we may remove more.
The ability to conjure food and water will not become available until higher levels (likely around level 40), as we're making changes to ensure mages generally won’t run out of mana at lower levels. Once mages learn how to conjure food and water, the conjured item will restore both health and mana.
Scorch will provide a damage bonus to the mage's fire spells. Our goal is for Scorch to be part of the mage's rotation and a useful damage-dealing ability, even if someone else is supplying the group with the spell Critical Strike debuff. Scorch will provide the mage with more specific benefits, which can also be improved through talents.


New Talents and Talent Changes

Arcane Focus will now return mana for each spell that fails to hit your target, including Arcane Missiles that fail to launch. We want Arcane mages to have several talents that play off of how much mana the character has and give the player enough tools to manage mana.
The talent Playing with Fire will reduce the cooldown of Blast Wave when hit by a melee attack, instead of its current effect.
Pyromaniac will grant Haste when three or more targets are getting damaged by the effects of your damage-over-time (DoT) fire spells.
The Burnout talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana.


Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Arcane
Spell damage
Spell Haste
Mana Adept

Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.

Fire
Spell damage
Spell Crit
Ignite

Ignite: All direct-damage fire spells will add a damage-over-time (DoT) component when cast. The flavor will be similar to how Fireball works; however, the DoT component will be much stronger.

Frost
Spell damage
Spell Crit damage
Deathfrost

Deathfrost: Casting Frostbolt places a buff on the mage that increases the damage for all frost, fire, and arcane spells. The only damage spell that won't be affected by this buff is Frostbolt.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we’re looking forward to hearing your initial thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

[TwentYxFoeS]

All I wanted was a viable AoE Arcane spell. I think it is stupid that arcane mages use flamestrike and blizzard to aoe.

[Zerutan]

keep in mind it's only a preview, not everything that is going to happen or be implanted is on the list.

[Twidis]

Hmmm cant complain in general, though one thing make me irk, a lot.

"We are planning to remove spells that don't have a clear purpose. Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward, and Frost Ward are being removed from the game, and we may remove more."

In what way dont they have a clear purpose, or real utility?
They go all "we want to make the game fun" and then take out all of buffs that dont have a 100% uptime? what?
Hell, no, i use dampen magic all the time on myself, wards? all the time in pvp and some pve... how... how arent they clear? or... useful, or ... just what?
there goes some of class uniqueness -.-

[Plexiforce]

Um arcane explosion is an aoe, which really isnt all that bed when no cooldowns are running in icc trash and i get bored i hop in and im not far from the blizzarding mages. I personally find it more fun hopping around BOOM BOOM BOOM

[TwentYxFoeS]

Thats true but for five levels I don't think we will be more than 3 new spells. I mean we only got 2 for 71-80.

[Slügo]

I really like this preview, its the most interesting I've seen yet! (and not just because I'm a mage)

Flame Orb - Confused on how it may work but saw this comming
Blood lust - AMAZING.. did not see that coming at all, if anything I thought rogues would get something like this
Wall of Fog - I'm moist

So we have smoke cloud, wall of fog and life grip and lust.. RMP is totally fair now! Finally Blizz your doing something right!

Biggest complaint... Arcane.. seems its going back to how shitty it was in Naxx days

FIRE I'M BACK.

but its just a preview.. who knows

[Antik]

Mana Adept

So, so disappointed. Blizzard does not have the ability to balance something like this, they have shown in the past that they don't have the ability to balance the simple aspects of dps across classes, let alone a sliding gauge in one class versus others.

Mark my words, blizzard will fuck this up, mages will do "too much damage" on very short fights. But any significantly long fight and we will be fucked.

Arcane Missiles is being redesigned to become a proc-based spell. Whenever the mage does damage with any spell, there is a chance for Arcane Missiles to become available, similar to how the warrior’s Overpower works. The damage and mana cost of this spell will be reworked to make it very desirable to use when available. This change should make gameplay more dynamic for the mage, particularly at low levels.

This is terrible, the already shallow depth of arcane was astounding, now they are removing even more? What are mages going to do, spam arcane blast forever and waste mana or drop the debuff using a gimped arcane barrage (which should be un-nerfed, it's an old relic to AP + POM ABlast + ABarring people in arena).

Flame Orb (available at level 81): Inspired by Prince Taldaram’s abilities in Ahn'kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in front in a straight line, sending beams that cause fire damage to passing targets. Once it’s cast, the mage is free to begin casting other spells as the Flame Orb travels. While the spell will be useful to any spec, Fire mages will have talents that improve it, possibly causing the Flame Orb to explode when it reaches its destination.

Decent, not what I expected. Fire already had significant depth and the change to scorch adds more to the rotation, this just adds more, where other trees, like frost and arcane, are stuck being one or two button dps trees.

And really, an AOE ability? This is the one place mages didn't need help.

This really is subpar, mages needed help with movement fights, and depth of rotations in frost and arcane. None of these issues were even touched upon, I fail to see what blizzard feels mages want or need when these are the kinds of things they feel we need in Cataclysm.

[Nashori]

So,the lvl85 new mage spell is essentially a wall to protect the flag in WSG? Am i reading this correctly?

If that's the case i smell a case of fail here, but maybe i'm wrong as it is still early...

[Twidis]

Thats true but for five levels I don't think we will be more than 3 new spells. I mean we only got 2 for 71-80.

Well we are actually loosing 4 or more...

[Ceronus]

"The Burnout talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana."

That's just... amazing. Along with the Fire Orb. I can't wait to start using that in a rotation. Best. Preview. Yet. Besides the Spiritwalker's Grace which will be overpowered in both PvE and PvP, lol.

[Orion71483]

I like the new Mage "heroism". I wonder if this will work with icy veins. The removal of the wards and amp/damp magic is cool. I don't see why any one would use these unless they were in a melee heavy fight. Would you really want damp magic on yourself? I wouldn't want to gimp my own dps.

[Titan]

Overall it's a joke.

1. Fire gets a new shitty AOE ability. Unless the damage when it hits the target is substantial, it will only be used to AOE trash packs

2. Frost gets another PVP talent. Nothing else to say about this. Yet every mage wanted Frost to become a viable PVE dps spec again.

3. We get heroism, something that has been in the game since BC.

4. Deathfrost, you know, the frost tree mastery that doesn't work with fucking Frostbolt. Lets bring Frost mages not because their dps is good, but because they have a gimmick that the raid needs!!!!!!!

5. Ignite, looks like they couldn't figure out how to fix ignite munching and decided to make it a flat dot and give it to us as a mastery.

6. Mana Adept - so Arcane mages have had mana problems since Arcane was turned from our turd tree into something that could actually be worth spec'ing deep into. Since the new gear in Cata rewards SP based in INT, it's clear Arcane mages won't have way more intellect then Fire mages outside of talents. Meaning Arcane will inherently do less dps unless evocate CD is lowered, or mana gems get a new talent that makes them return 50 percent of mana on use. This mastery could be a completely disaster, or it could be interesting, we will see how the talent tree looks at a later date.

7. Arcane focus, now rewards mages for missing. Because so many mages raid without being spell hit capped. Sounds like a utility ability to me.

Overall, what did they do?

Fire is the PVE tree
Frost is the PVP tree
Arcane could possibly be a tree you spec into to get extra mana talents they will undoubtedly get. In other words, Utility.

This is the same shit they said they wanted to stop years ago. Fail preview is fail.

[RyanS]

I swear i saw somebody suggest that Hero ability and it even had the name Time travel or something. They suggested it on these forums a while ago ??? anybody else remember?

[Deleted]

Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.

gotta say tho the rest of the changes seem really sweet

[petninja]

the new 81 level spell sounds just like the sorceress ice ball from Diablo 2. yay diablo 2!

[Mathin]

for PvP Damp magic was a nice trash buff.

I'm just a bit curious about the 3rd tier mastery for frost tier.
If frostbolt doesn't gain damage from it, are they expecting the frost tree to use different schools of magic? With the proc-based AM, will the frost tree be a tree of different schools? Or is it more focused towards PvP with FFB and other abilities?

I agree with most people, fires looking like it's making a sweet comeback.

[crayven]

Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.

gotta say tho the rest of the changes seem really sweet

Probably anti arcane blast spam tactic.
Although our mages usually cry for innervate and they keep pushing 15-16k dps anyway ;D

[Twidis]

I like the new Mage "heroism". I wonder if this will work with icy veins. The removal of the wards and amp/damp magic is cool. I don't see why any one would use these unless they were in a melee heavy fight. Would you really want damp magic on yourself? I wouldn't want to gimp my own dps.

It just reduces the damage and healing you take, not deal, well unless you are refering to incanters absorption...
Its up 100% the time in pvp with me at least
Wards if you ever used them can be life savers, so many times i won a fight because of them, specially when talented (which is part of arcane spec anyway)
I mean, really? how is it cool to loose spells? no matter how "useless" they might be to some people, its their loss, why punish those who use them because the majority is too clueless?

Then again, i will answer it myself, welcome to the modern world.

[Swizzle]

Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.

gotta say tho the rest of the changes seem really sweet

note, MUCH MORE DAMAGE. he's not saying your base damage will be based off of 100% mana, rather at that point you will be doing much more than normal.

think of 100% being equitable to a 4 stack AB debuff whereas 50% is a 2 stack.