Arcane Nerf? I don't understand.

[Griepen]

Take into consideration that the 4set bonus will be changed in firelands, making the haste more...attractive. Mastery will probably trump the value of haste by far, even more so than it already is

[Blayzee]

Firelands is still a while off though.

[YorHa-Unit-2B]

Re-Roll to Destruction Warlocks and your problems will be solved you pesky mages.

[Deleted]

Oh it does sir.. it does, your opinion has been disregarded since the 4.0 hit and you told everyone to go full mastery and use FFB.

Let's not act like you're god here. You may be in a good guild but you're still using a 50 hit bracer enchant, and a 50 hit boot enchant, which by definition makes you bad.

[Azrile]

It is a buff, but a minor one. The increase in damage will be countered by a lower amount of time spent use AB's with 4 stacks and having to resort to lesser damaging spells.

The simple fact whether or not it's a buff is that it's not enough, nor does it fix the "one-button spec" problem.

It does fix the one button spec problem since you will drain your mana if you do the same rotation you did before this patch. The goal of this change is to buff your damage ONLY if you start using those other two spells... they got the big buff. Basically Bizzard recognized you needed a buff, but only gave it to you if you stop using your 2 key rotation.

And to the person who is saying Arcane are at the top of the charts, you are using theorycrafting website that has BIS gear. Sites that track actual performance in raids (not theorycrafting) show Arcane mages only ahead of frost mages and Sub rogues and all 3 rather far behind everyone else.

I like Blizzards solution... give them a buff, but make them earn it.

---------- Post added 2011-03-26 at 03:21 PM ----------

Yeh and every other class has to deal with movement and suffer a lot more then arcane. Blink and barrage > movement. Arcane is far from the bottom 3 DPS specs in game.

www.stateofdps.com which records logs of actual fights would beg to differ.

[Cebel]

back on topic hello pixul nice to meet you haven't seen you in a wile... i hear you're the new king of the mage forums. Well in imo its more of a buff FREE HASTE thats what it boils down to instead of you messing around with the perfect balance of haste/mastery its pretty much allowing you to go full mastery and prob crit. Just got to wait and see i guess

Yea until you get to the one fight mages go arcane for and then your super haste capped and you stand around for half a second between AB casts tickling your butthole with all of your fingers.

[lightofdawn]

wait....this is a thread calling mages at least moderately powerful?
and it was made by a mage

i salute you sir!

[Deleted]

I wish that site would just die. State of DPS was, is, and never will be accurate.

[Cebel]

Actually, if you look here http://raidbots.com/dpshistory/Overall/25N/ and take a look at each fight individually you will see that fire mages are a top 6 spec for every single fight this tier except Al'Akir. It also shows dps trends over time, and again you can see fire mages are doing quite well. But I guess if mages aren't #1 for every single fight, Blizz should buff you guys right?

Did you also take into account the ridiculous benefits mages can get on those fights? Such as massive combustion spreading and damage modifiers that mages are known to scale so well with? Unless there's gonna be stupid dmg modifier gimmicks on every boss in firelands like they were in this tier, we will be in a pretty sad place.

[Azrile]

And you might take a look at adjusted totals? Even so, fire has increased a little above 1k in the last two weeks on overall totals, which is more than any other spec. The priests and druids have stayed at the same spot for ages now, unlike fire mages, because they were nerfed pretty quickly.

So what is your point.. this thread and change has nothing to do with fire mages, Arcane mages are near the bottom of every chart. Both shaman specs are right in the middle, which is great. Or is your argument that Blizzard should not balance arcane and frost because fire mage is in 2nd place right now? I guess all the cat druids should go moonkin, and every hunter should be Marks... Congratulations on designing wow like the mistakes in Vanilla when the devs railroaded every class into a single spec.

[Cebel]

Take into consideration that the 4set bonus will be changed in firelands, making the haste more...attractive. Mastery will probably trump the value of haste by far, even more so than it already is

First person in this thread to actually make a viable point that i had overlooked, but you also have to consider how long until we drop that 4pc? Will the 4pc in firelands be worth using, or will it be another 2pc wonder where we will run 2pc + offset gear? Time will only tell, but as of right now i personally dislike the changes, wtb +13% dmg

[Agroculture]

Not everyone has Shard of Woe...

DPS balancing happens at BiS levels...

[Azrile]

DPS balancing happens at BiS levels...

No way, the devs are looking at stats from that actual raids that are going on now. I am sure BIS theorycrafting is looked at, but the devs are smart enough to know that 90% of the time in raids is not spent in a patchwerk moments.

[Deleted]

as it sounds , i think we should wait and see what changes will finally apply when we go 4.1 live , untill then i think blizzard's experimenting a little bit ,

although the cast time reduction , i wuld welcome this much more than the 13% buff from the previous ptr build , atm the biggest problem i have , untill i can lay my hands on a shoulder or head t11 , is low haste on ab , i run a high mastery build , ( ~ 26-27% mastery ) at the sacrifice of having ab cast at 2.2 sec ( 2.1 with shaman totems ) so i would welcome a faster cast , in movement fights , it will help me further prevent ab stack falling while trying to stutter-cast ab while moving so overall i think it's a slight buff if anything ,


also keep in mind that this is the first tier , in all previous packs , 1st tier's 4 sets were rubbish , so i'm preeeeetty sure that in later tiers we'll get a worthy 4 set bonus wich will make the hasted ( lower cast time + self haste-ing ) arcane blast a very good idea

[Deleted]

Considering a good portion (read: 75%-90%) of our single target DPS is done by Arcane Blast, this is a big nerf as Arcane Blast actually does LESS damage than it does on live (100% + 13% = 113% - 12% = 99.44%).

Ok, lets try this another way instead of just adding and subtracting percents wich almost always is rounded up or down making it somewhat erronous to work with.

2.5 sec with 1933-2247 dmg.
2.2 sec with 1710-1988 dmg.

I'm gonna be lazy and just use the higher number.

2247/2.5 = 898.8 Dps
1988/2.2 = 903.636363... Dps

Not much higher, but higher. Its a buff.

And correct me if I'm wrong but isnt Arcane about haste and fast casts? How is a reduction in cast time a bad thing? Mana management isnt as bad as all the QQ people make it out to be. Learn to hang around shamans to get some sweet love from their totems, catch a priest when they use their hymn thingie, brush the catdruids fur and earn their innervate. You are not alone, there are 9 or 24 others there with you. Work with them.

[Deleted]

Additionally, the 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4 cast time reduction of the AB stacks carry more weight now. So, the damage of AB4 has been increased even more.

But it is just a minor damage increase. I think in the end it is a damage loss because of mana, even if you adjust your rotation to the changes. In my opinion these changes are good. Mana costs have been too low and the AB-spam phase too long.

[Deleted]

Ok, lets try this another way instead of just adding and subtracting percents wich almost always is rounded up or down making it somewhat erronous to work with.

2.5 sec with 1933-2247 dmg.
2.2 sec with 1710-1988 dmg.

I'm gonna be lazy and just use the higher number.

2247/2.5 = 898.8 Dps
1988/2.2 = 903.636363... Dps

Not much higher, but higher. Its a buff.

And correct me if I'm wrong but isnt Arcane about haste and fast casts? How is a reduction in cast time a bad thing? Mana management isnt as bad as all the QQ people make it out to be. Learn to hang around shamans to get some sweet love from their totems

,


good reasoning , you are very wrong about the shamans mana tide totem , it only gives mana regen to healers, as it now gives a spirit buff, huge buff at that , however there is no caster dps class that gets combat regen from spirit


AND BTW I don't see why people are worried that faster casts= oom , it doesn't ....adjust the rotation as you feel it right , but faster casts=faster DAMAGE =boss dies faster :P

[Sangheiili]

DPS balancing happens at BiS levels...

The source of your information was misleading. You sir have brought shame to us spies everywhere. Hand over your eternal reward.

[Swizzle]

It doesn't mean you'll go OOM, it just means you'll spend less time at high amounts of mana due to faster mana usage, which means you'll be doing less damage faster due to Mana Adept.

[hairdewx]

AND BTW I don't see why people are worried that faster casts= oom , it doesn't ....adjust the rotation as you feel it right , but faster casts=faster DAMAGE =boss dies faster :P

Faster casting does = oom faster because of mage armor mechanics. (mana restored every 5 sec) Because our mana regen does not change, no bonuses to evocation, etc. we are indeed casting more often, but at lower stacks.

So far the issue is the adjusted rotation requires casting missile barrage and arcane barrage more often... which those two spells are dps losses. Although the 13% buff to those spells does help it not be as much a dps loss.

I haven't tried reforging out of all my haste to mastery yet, so maybe a dps increase can be found with that.