Are Mages Stagnating?

[Darnassian]

Pretty much this, and with arcane missiles messing things up.. its pretty much impossible to do a pure burn to 20-35% mana atm.

Also mastery for arcane is so strong now that you will want to stay as near to 100% mana as possible.

Missiles don't mess anything up, they actually deal a considerable amount of damage and generate arcane charges to increase their damage. Missiles = free damage

[Deleted]

Also, don't forget Arcane Blast damage has been halved, pretty much.

Arcane Missiles is very much worth casting, not in the least because the damage is actually respectable, but also because the arcane blast that follows it will be stronger (which doesn't work on live because AM clears the stacks on live, it doesn't on beta, fyi).

Someone on EJ had the idea that in order to maximize arcane dps on the beta, you were going to have to maximize arcane missiles spam, but I haven't checked in a few days/weeks if that's still the prevalent way of thinking.

It's a lot like live, except you spam AM as much as possible, instead of AB. Also, the AoE effect that Arcane Charges give to ABarr is just juicy. Like, 80k crits to 5 targets at 4 Arcane Charges juicy (Those are numbers equal to Arcane Blast in my gear, scaling might mess that up though).

[tenub]

Anyone here claiming that frost was even remotely a viable spec in cata is either a casual, delusional, or terrible. The only time frost was even seriously considered was for progression on Chimaeron where survivability was so important. Even then mages went back to arcane/fire after like two weeks. Even the best frost dps/rng has always been below average fire/arcane dps.

[Imnick]

Anyone here claiming that frost was even remotely a viable spec in cata is either a casual, delusional, or terrible. The only time frost was even seriously considered was for progression on Chimaeron where survivability was so important. Even then mages went back to arcane/fire after like two weeks. Even the best frost dps/rng has always been below average fire/arcane dps.

It was viable with T12 gear (in fact, the only spec that was better was Arcane with Shard of Woe), and it's still not the worst DPS spec in the game. You can be viable without being the best.
It's never been top DPS but it outdid quite a lot of other non-mage DPS specs.

[rokk]

Fire is more difficult to master than many people realize. The spell priority is simple, but getting the most out of combustion is what makes the spec fun for me, and it's what separates good fire mages from great ones. It's like poker, yes there's a lot of RNG, but there are also constants you can work with to optimize your chances. From staggering pyro procs by a fraction of a second to reduce munching, to stacking ignites, to holding off on a combust for 10 seconds because you know your haste proc trink is coming off icd, to knowing how to integrate into the mechanics of the fight, to maximizing the number of good combusts you get into a fight, to all of the numerous other factors that can affect a combust, it's one of the trickiest mechanics to really master.

People who simply have an addon and click combust when it lights up haven't mastered anything.

[tenub]

It was viable with T12 gear (in fact, the only spec that was better was Arcane with Shard of Woe), and it's still not the worst DPS spec in the game. You can be viable without being the best.
It's never been top DPS but it outdid quite a lot of other non-mage DPS specs.

Unfortunately, the best is required for competent guild progression and forcing yourself to do 4-10k less dps would get you sat or even worse kicked from any serious guild.

Also, arcane was 10 times harder to master than this rngfest that is fire. It isn't hard to hold off on combustion until you get fb->pb crits with a haste/int proc up. The problem is that the rng far outweighs the skill for playing fire atm.

[Deleted]

Anyone here claiming that frost was even remotely a viable spec in cata is either a casual, delusional, or terrible. The only time frost was even seriously considered was for progression on Chimaeron where survivability was so important. Even then mages went back to arcane/fire after like two weeks. Even the best frost dps/rng has always been below average fire/arcane dps.

Well, I´m what you call a "casual", raiding 1 - 2x a week. I´ve killed every HC T11 (including Sinestra) FL 6/7hc (had a big break just before Ragnaros till march 2012) as frost. Really had no problems, even with T11 gear : )

*Edit* Yes, with fire or arcane, i could have made some more dps on certain encounters, but especially in 10 man, frost have some pretty advantages

[mrgreenthump]

Missiles don't mess anything up, they actually deal a considerable amount of damage and generate arcane charges to increase their damage. Missiles = free damage

What I meant was due to extreme rng on AM procs, burning to "0" is really random, sometimes you might get 0 AM procs and get there in 20 secs, sometimes it might take full min or more cause you want to cast AM rather than AB, and at the same time you could be casting those same AM procs at full mana making them do 15-30% more damage.. plus your dots and damage procs will do increased damage aswell on full mana.. and arcane barrage not being a total lackluster spell anymore makes it worth being casted, not just cause you need to reset stacks.. Thats what I meant with messed up

[Dokem]

If you say warlocks are in better shape in Cata, sorry... you don't know much about warlocks.

In MoP beta? sure they are getting a lot of love. It's justice.

Mages I see only arcane are getting love, with much more interesting rotation.

[Socialhealer]

i raided firelands as frost and absolutely pwned, i got loads of stick the first time i walked into the raid frost specced, but after about 3 boss fights and nobody being able to topple me from the top of the damage meters, everybody shut up.

nothing to do with spec, you just raided with terrible players, you would of just kicked their ass even more as arcane in t12.

[Deleted]

nothing to do with spec, you just raided with terrible players, you would of just kicked their ass even more as arcane in t12.

Without SoW not even in a patchwerk fight, but the whole discussion leads to... nothing.

[tenub]

Without SoW not even in a patchwerk fight, but the whole discussion leads to... nothing.

Going arcane was hardly based on having SoW or not.

[Bombkirby]

Going arcane was hardly based on having SoW or not.

Dude there's math and numbers to prove this. We go through this argument like every month (facts VS ignorance). Frost was one of the better choices under exact circumstances. But it isn't anymore. The end.

[Swizzle]

They stagnated long ago. The change to cataclysm change to shatter RUINED frost as you were forced to stack crit, then they buffed mastery forcing every mage to stack mastery, boring the shit out of every mage that played in TBC/wotlk when you could stack whatever you wanted depending on how you play.

Uhh...there wasn't enough Haste in TBC to freely stack it, and in WotLK you basically went pure Haste...in no time could you "stack" what you wanted.

[Dasani]

I've never liked mages, always found them profoundly boring. In fact, they are the ONLY class in the game that i've never leveled to level cap simply because they are so dull.

It's kind of sad really, I remember on vanilla WOW's release day, one of the first characters I made right away was Leshrac, named after The Tormented Soul hero from DOTA. The real DOTA from WC3:RoC, not that all stars trash that ripped off the real DOTA years afterwards. He was a mage. I had hoped to make him one of my mains but it just didn't happen, he was boring. Every time they changed mages in some way for the better, i'd try leveling one again, but it's just too boring to fool with.

[Swizzle]

In my six years playing this game, I have not found a SINGLE class that was fun to level. Dismissing an entire class as being boring simply because you could not make the effort to do the grind no person really enjoys making is slightly silly. It's like thinking the real world is going to suck because school was boring as hell.

[announced]

i dont mind fire being easy to play.. its mildly challenging watching your trinket procs and timing fireballs with hotstreaks for a good combustion...
arcane is what it is.. massive burst damage for very still-situations.. fire is more inconsistent but mostly superior dps.. both specs require thinking ahead and proper use of cds/ holding onto stacks and general smart play..

i kinda wish they'd give frost a dps makeover.. but frost doesnt really bring anything to the table.. aside from some mana regen that every raid rooster pretty much has.

[Bombkirby]

Yeah i know Warlocks were totally broken in Cataclysm so they needed some changes but Mages are almost the same for like 6 years except some minor tweaks.I like the direction Fire took in Cataclysm (with all the dots) but that didn't change the gameplay.

To be honest, back in Vanilla and in TBC (for the most part) the rotations were just spamming your main nuke and using your cooldown. I'd say things HAVE changed a lot over the years. But from Wotlk to MoP, the specs have kept their basic idea. Mainly Fire seems largely the same. The other two have new resources/spells/etc to make them different.

[Meillassoux]

To be honest, back in Vanilla and in TBC (for the most part) the rotations were just spamming your main nuke and using your cooldown. I'd say things HAVE changed a lot over the years. But from Wotlk to MoP, the specs have kept their basic idea. Mainly Fire seems largely the same. The other two have new resources/spells/etc to make them different.

How is Arcane any different?We still press the same buttons just differently?>.<

[Max Rebo]

Mages I see only arcane are getting love, with much more interesting rotation.

All three mage specs are being tweaked to some extent. Arcane is more interactive now, Fire no longer has to fish for Impact procs, and Frost loses Deep Freeze in favor of Frost Bomb. They're all works in progress.