6.0 Mage Speculation & Paranoia

[Polarthief]

Controversial blast wave idea. Blast Wave replaces icy ward. Cast time AoE knockback. Dazes targets for x seconds..BLAST WAVE DEALS NO DAMAGE

If it has a cast time, then we might as well keep Flamestrike and give it a knockback component, though tbh that actually does sound cool if it did more damage than a puppy dog's piss puddle. Let's keep it instant, please.


However, the idea of it (BW) replacing something on the L45 tier is actually quite a possibility. All 3 of the L45 tier could become abilities that are either defensive or offensive in nature that also have a level of CC to them. You could, say, put Blast Wave and Mana Shield on the same tier because you either get an AoE knockback/daze (or when glyphed a targeted daze) that also does damage, or a shield that eats a small chunk of mana to negate a decent chunk of health damage, while also knocking back all targets around you when it pops (assuming we were going with the Cataclysm design of Mana Shield).

While I don't exactly have a third talent to add, it would be interesting to see how a damaging AoE could fair with a defensive shield on the same talent tier, because there are many situations where I could see Mana Shield being more viable than Blast Wave, and vice versa, in both PvP and PvE situations, especially if Blast Wave is an instant, 20s cd, with a fair bit of damage tied to it. If a situation calls for requiring more AoE damage or a knockback specifically, I might opt for Blast Wave, while on the same token, if a situation requires a bit more defense, I might opt for Mana Shield (and who knows what third option they could put here!). Both talents being very helpful in certain situations, they wouldn't be overly powerful in any, allowing players to pick and choose what they would like. In short, by placing same-category talents on the same tier (such as L90 talents or the defensive cooldown tiers), people always pick the best one because they all accomplish the same thing, just slightly differently, while Blast Wave and Mana Shield share a small component like knockback, but players would be given a choice to pick slightly more offensively or slightly more defensively, similar to picking the blue or red ring in Legend of Zelda (if they were ~1.25x instead of 2x the benefit).


... Man, I just sorta had a mini-theory there and rolled with it. Enjoy the wall of text about me auto-piloting my brain about the design of how talents SHOULD be.



TL;DR: Blizzard chose talent tiers to share a similar design, and in doing so, they actually created cookie-cutter builds. Placing 3 talents with differing designs offers REAL choice to the players, such as having Blast Wave and Mana Shield on the same tier.

[Deleted]

Regarding horde racials:

Blood elf for best horde class for both arcane and fire then?

And I'd guess goblin for frost mages? Or do we suppose troll will still be as good or better at 15% berserking?

Blood Elf for Fire certainly; 3% mana every 2 minutes isn't exactly stellar for Arcane, so even with 1% crit baked in doubt BE will be best for Arcane.
Berserking haste averaged out (assuming CD remains @ 3m) is 0.833%, compared to 1.111% now (which made it better than Goblin anyway) and considering they're reducing the effect that CD stacking has (I believe?) it might be that Goblin is likely going to be the best for Arcane/Frost.

[voltaa]

Does your guild seriously change races and factions depending on appropriate bonuses for raiding?

A lot of people in the type of guild that wants it's players to play the best race will play that race anyways, like minded people tend to stick together. Though with these new racials I think one of the goals was to stop the faction changes for racials that have become so common because troll.

[Deleted]

What about the Panda racial? At MoP launch, was it superior to the Globlin one?

Either way, the stat weights will be much more closer for all the secondaries so it's difficult to predict which racial will be the best for which spec.

[Deleted]

What about the Panda racial? At MoP launch, was it superior to the Globlin one?

Either way, the stat weights will be much more closer for all the secondaries so it's difficult to predict which racial will be the best for which spec.

Your second point semi-answers your first one; we won't know how strong the Panda racial will be until we can figure out scaling for various different specs. If it remains similar to what it is right now, Panda could be very strong for Arcane/Frost, LIKELY that BE still best for Fire

[voltaa]

LIKELY that BE still best for Fire

Mhm, if the scaling for the panda racial remains the same, it will just be Worgen v. Panda 2.0

[Akraen]

These are some interesting racials, especially Night Elves, though I have to wonder if there's still a lot of imbalance. Seems like Humans kind of get the shaft here, especially with Dwarves getting a very nice debuff remover and 2% Crit Effects, Gnomes getting a VERY nice bonus to non-Mana users, Draenei now giving main stat (Intellect), etc. Overall, it seems like Dwarves get the most useful (Defensively) for PvE, and probably even for PvP. Every Man for Himself loses a lot of power since trinket iLevels will be significantly lower and not nearly as powerful as they are in live, so it almost seems like Humans need a new active cooldown, and in no way am I overjudging Humans right after I just woke up just because I'm a Human. Nope, no way no how.


(I bet Akraen is gonna be happy with some free movement speed and 1% Haste [seeing as how like 95% of raiding guilds raid at night]).

I feel as though they did exactly what I wanted them to do, WoD will be the rise of the Night Elf Frost Mage. Evenshade is working wonders now that he's back in Darnassus, bring power back to the Kaldorei!

/wink
/grin

[Imnick]

To be honest I'd still be happiest if stat and combat based racials were entirely removed and replaced with things like Cannibalise, Diplomacy, Bouncy, Wisp Spirit, Running Wild, Best Deals Anywhere, Pack Goblin and Shadowmeld (yeah I know it has niche uses but they're not very important ones) instead of Escape Artist, Stoneform and Every Man for Himself (preferably with some aethetic flavour abilities like Worgen have too!), but just getting everyone on a roughly equal level will have to do I suppose.

[Polarthief]

I feel as though they did exactly what I wanted them to do, WoD will be the rise of the Night Elf Frost Mage. Evenshade is working wonders now that he's back in Darnassus, bring power back to the Kaldorei!

/wink
/grin

TBH that 2% movement speed tempts me, should I come back for WoD, assuming they keep the now super UP EMfH.

FFXIV is fun and all, but BLM (Black Mage) is nothing like WoW Mage. I thought Mages felt slow and immobile; good god Arceus does BLM take that to another notch!


Speaking of racials, if Warlocks were annoyed by Rogues back in BC/LK days, imagine their newfound frustration against DWARF Rogues with new Stoneform... That shit is BROKEN now.

[Deleted]

Your second point semi-answers your first one; we won't know how strong the Panda racial will be until we can figure out scaling for various different specs. If it remains similar to what it is right now, Panda could be very strong for Arcane/Frost, LIKELY that BE still best for Fire

Well i tend to believe that Draenei racial and Panda racial will be quite the same if not equal as im looking at it. I actualy dont see reason why it shouldn't be

Maybe unless they implement in WoD a high end food wich buffs secondary stats

[Deleted]

Well i tend to believe that Draenei racial and Panda racial will be quite the same if not equal as im looking at it. I actualy dont see reason why it shouldn't be

Maybe unless they implement in WoD a high end food wich buffs secondary stats

Quite possibly, but we'd have to see what X's value is when the patch notes drop. A lot of what is being said is still speculation as this point, but they're still semi-educated guesses.

[Akraen]

Dear Cycobi,

You are a mage of great prowess and fame, yet I do not see you on #mmoc-mages IRC, irc.quakenet.org 6667.

Please remedy this or you will be fined 1% of your total mastery each day until you comply. We don't have any arcane discussion ever, and I would love to get your take on some things pertaining to this thread and more.

Also we need someone to control Ataxus, he's a wildcard.

Lots of Love,

Akraen

[Deleted]

snip

I was one of the original Mages in the channel; it was just completely dead back when it started

[Deleted]

I'm a Nightelf Frost Mage. And heck, i'm gonna stay one in WoD!!!

[Pyromelter]

Does your guild seriously change races and factions depending on appropriate bonuses for raiding?

Not only would they race change (horde, no need to faction change), they would race change based on tier and roles. The tauren warrior who was MT'ing throne of thunder race changed to troll simply for Thok in SoO.

And this is not uncommon in lower ranked guilds.

The bigger issue, IMO, is when applying to a guild. If your race is sub-optimal for your class, raid leaders want to know why, and if you are willing to change.

This happens far more often in guilds beyond the world top 100 than you would expect.

Check out the warrior forum:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Racial-changes

Hand wringing (or rejoicing) over horde all switching to blood elf for warriors. I can guarantee you not all those people talking about it are in top 100 guilds.

In-combat racial bonuses simply need to not exist. The only reason they do is for blizzard to give their players another reason to fork over tons more money to the company. There is nothing interesting or unique about 1% bonus to critical strike, except that if you are a fire mage, you are going to be technically sub-optimal playing horde as anything other than blood elf in WoD. Just like playing anything other than Troll has been sub-optimal for the past 3 expansions or so.

I've personally been blood elf forever, because I simply like the archetype of an elven mage. It has definitely had a significant effect on lowering my dps, especially now in MoP, and now that WoD is coming, I won't have to consider race changing because I'll already be the most optimal race. I feel bad for everyone who went troll that was forced to, but yes shang, it was a lot of people, and a lot more people than you might think.

Regarding Factions: A quick check of wowprogress shows me that something like 75% of all guilds who have killed heroic Garrosh were horde. Considering the fact that Alliance makes up 52.6% of the US population of level 90s, and 52.3% of the EU population of level 90s, the disparity can only be explained in that the horde bonuses were strong enough to sway the leaders of many guilds to switch to horde. There have even been some notable high-end switches, such as vodka, and other mainstay guilds that have been historically alliance (such as premonition) were not able to recruit Raid Leaders and high end players to continue raiding at a high level into MoP.

A lot of people, regarding races, are like "hurrdurr unless you are a top 5 guild it shouldn't matter." I'm here to tell you: It does matter. Wow is a game if min/maxing. If race didn't matter, then neither would things like putting the best gem in your socket. I mean, c'mon, some people re-gem and re-spec on a per-encounter basis. In Wrath, many people would carry tons of glyphs around making scribes enormously wealthy to change glyphs between encounters. Before dual spec, people would hearth out from raids, respec, and be summoned back on a per-encounter basis.

Having the "correct" race in that sense was no different than having the "correct" gems, "correct" spec, "correct" talents. In a game where min-maxing is expected of everyone, yes, your race did matter. While some guilds would be okay with suboptimal choices (like guilds being supportive of frost mages when they were very underwhelming), it is still in the nature of every raid leader who does progression raiding, at any level, to desire the maximum performance from their raiders.

[Kapadons]

*Snip*

The difference in playing Troll VS Undead was like 500 DPS last time I simmed it (it's been 4-5 months). 500DPS is not making or breaking any kill for any guild other than those in the world first race. The only people that are actually able to take advantage of a race change are the ones killing stuff while really under geared for the encounter. The rest of us are just being sheep and following what they do.

[Vedel]

The difference in playing Troll VS Undead was like 500 DPS last time I simmed it (it's been 4-5 months). 500DPS is not making or breaking any kill for any guild other than those in the world first race. The only people that are actually able to take advantage of a race change are the ones killing stuff while really under geared for the encounter. The rest of us are just being sheep and following what they do.

The issue with Berserking and Blood Rage is not that they are slightly higher overall. It is the fact that they can be stacked with other cooldowns. Especially for mages since you can AT your berserking buff and get another 6 seconds. Berserking and Blood Rage allow horde dps to have higher burst dps. Which is extremely important for the dps checks on fights like H Paragons and H Garrosh. It is not going to give a guild 5% more dps but if you are missing a dps check by less than 1% consistently then those racials matter.

[Pyromelter]

The difference in playing Troll VS Undead was like 500 DPS last time I simmed it (it's been 4-5 months). 500DPS is not making or breaking any kill for any guild other than those in the world first race. The only people that are actually able to take advantage of a race change are the ones killing stuff while really under geared for the encounter. The rest of us are just being sheep and following what they do.

The difference between a 160 INT gem and a 160/160 expertise/crit gem is far less than 500 dps, yet we still gem expertise/crit. That one gem is not making or breaking any kill for any guild other than those in the world first race.

See what I did there? Race is part of the min/max culture of wow. Denying the fact does not make it any less true.

Also you mentioned troll v. undead. What about troll v. blood elf? Or troll v. dwarf?

Finally, in any class guide, you will see bullet points on things like professions and racial bonuses. If race didn't matter at all, they wouldn't be included in those guides.

Bottom line: It matters. It might not matter to you, or to other guilds that are more accommodating, but it matters a great deal to a lot of people. The raid team I was with through MoP ended up 10/14 heroic in SoO. They had people race change. It was their choice, but they wanted to min/max. And they aren't the only raid team that was out of the top 1000 that had people race change.

Edit: And Vedel brings up the other reason, burst damage way more important than sustained in MoP, making those racial differences more important than ever.

[Kapadons]

There's an awful lot of elitism in our forums sometimes. People are different. There's no need to throw insults around.

Fire has a scaling problem. It's real and I think Blizzard is going to try and fix it. It has nothing to do with LFR players or bads.

On topic, the idea of RoP as a cooldown is really exciting. It gives the talent focus and mages a straight up, no gimmick, DPS cooldown that's still a little more than press this and get x% more DPS.

It seems we won't be seeing our talents tonight, but I'm still pumped to see what they have ready for us!

The issue with Berserking and Blood Rage is not that they are slightly higher overall. It is the fact that they can be stacked with other cooldowns. Especially for mages since you can AT your berserking buff and get another 6 seconds. Berserking and Blood Rage allow horde dps to have higher burst dps. Which is extremely important for the dps checks on fights like H Paragons and H Garrosh. It is not going to give a guild 5% more dps but if you are missing a dps check by less than 1% consistently then those racials matter.

To any properly geared raid, average 575 raid ilvl, 1 % missing a dps check is a personel or strat issue ,not a racial bonus issue. When method first killed paragons they were like 565 ilvl. They needed that 1% bonus. Any one else does not NEED to be any certain race to kill any certain boss.

[ombus]

anybody knows what the "minor talent" on the mage section means ? ( a new system like glyphs ? )