What Mage abilities on the chop block for WoD?

[Rilas13]

Just as the title says, with blizz saying 20% lost across the board what will mages loose do you think? They have said they want to drop rotation spells and cc related. IE. Priests lost psychic scream apparently.


Edit: Based on popular opinion it seems that most of our changes will be more of spec specific removal then total removal.
We know our talent trees are getting a dramatic update so i'll leave that whole section alone and just focus on spells we currently have and may move around accordingly. Anticipated list:

Armor spells--> passive based on spec, ie. Fire mages always have molten armor on.
Fire Blast--> Removed.
Frostfire Bolt--> Removed from Fire/Frost
Ice Lance--> Removed from Fire/Arcane
CoC--> Removed from Fire
Flamestrike---> Removed, neglected spell.
Arcane Brilliance--> Passive to raid, with all other class buffs.
Deep Freeze--> Removed from Arcane/Fire
Improved Counterspell--> Removed.
Brain Freeze/Pyromaniac--> Removed, I can see this based on the current implication to make Mage bombs spec specific and put all three of them into one talent. Giving two new talent options for 75.

[teebo]

I was thinking this earlier. I came up with these.

Armors->Passive when you switch specs
AI - I could see them making all buffs passive as long as youre in their group
Mana shield talent to something else
Bombs talent
rof & coc - not that I want them to go
Frostjaw
Flame strike to fire only,though I wish fs was instant or gone and blastwave returned
Forgot this. Arcane Blast to arcane only and change it to a channeled to match the other aoe. It would suck to lose a instant aoe but Im just thinking how to match up spells to specs.

Mana gem?
Single use conjure?

[Imnick]

Brain Freeze and Ice Lance are rotationally required, so is Fire Blast for Fire but I can see it removed from the other two.
Ice Lance won't be removed in the name of reducing mobile damage because it hits for nothing without the buff readied.
Brain Freeze will just trigger some other way.

I doubt Blizzard are going to touch buffs either, they're fine with things like Lightning Shield and Weapon Imbues and they don't take up hotkey real estate.
Ditto @ conjure food, though I can see mana gem going just because it's only useful for one spec (it could be replaced by a mana-restoring cooldown or just removed completely).

[Teebu]

I'm assuming that the 20% cut is untalented. So untalented at 90 you'd lose 20% of your spells. Spec Fire and you get Flamestrike/Inferno Blast in addition to the other spells you normally get. Frost and you get CoC/Blizzard for example. Buffs will probably stay, would suck to lose the option to dispel enemy buffs in PvP because they are passive.

I would like to see them remove Conjure Food along with Create Healthstone and just keep table/Soulwell and remove the CD.

[Rilas13]

Changing buffs around would be kind of nice. It may sound odd but I did kinda miss when paying attention to your mana was a thing. Otherwise having a mana bar just feels pointless. As a mage now I never need my Mana gem or used the food I make through the entire expansion. But in BC there was a careful balance between Evo, and mana gems. I know playing healing priest it is still more of an issue then I could possibly find in my Mage right now.

Also forgot about flamestrike, I think that spell has been useless since Vanilla. It has always been less good then other spells for a few reasons. Even now it costs more mana for less damage then Blizzard. It needs to be spec specific or much prefered just drop it and bring back Blast Wave. Why did they aver decide FS over BW anyway?

[Imnick]

Don't forget, the 20% is a median number across all classes, not something they have said they are commited to doing for every class.
Mages already did lose a lot of their buttons in the previous patch and apart from a few abilities becoming talents I expect we are going to remain largely untouched. They aren't just removing abilities arbitrarily because they can.

[Deleted]

PoM lost or arcane
Fire blast
Ice barrier merged with ice ward again
Ring of Frost probably redesigned to a slow
Armors merged into one and becomes passive as they did with warlocks and demon/fel armor
Frostjaw also removed
90 talents obliterated
Some sort of AOE change, maybe just one for each spec
And as confirmed, bombs will also depend on your spec.

[Deleted]

Don't forget, the 20% is a median number across all classes, not something they have said they are commited to doing for every class.
Mages already did lose a lot of their buttons in the previous patch and apart from a few abilities becoming talents I expect we are going to remain largely untouched. They aren't just removing abilities arbitrarily because they can.

^ This. Also, when thinking which abilities might get removed, consider also leveling, not only end game. I'm saying this in direct regard of the idea that Frost Nova might get chopped. It is still quite useful in leveling.

[Polarthief]

- Mana Gem (made Arcane only/it just becomes a 2m cooldown to refresh some mana)
- Flamestrike (it's really not needed)
- Conjure Refreshment (tables are better)
- Fire Blast (Fire may or may not keep IBlast only because they may modify the spec to where it doesn't need it)
- Mage Bombs (Fire may or may not keep LB)
- L90 talents (pretty much a given... hopefully, and replaced with something else)
- Armor Spells (made passive)
- Arcane Brilliance (made passive)



(Copy Pasted from my post on the 6.0 thread)

[voltaa]

^ This. Also, when thinking which abilities might get removed, consider also leveling, not only end game. I'm saying this in direct regard of the idea that Frost Nova might get chopped. It is still quite useful in leveling.

Expanding on what you say here also people need to remember that even though the majority on this forum are raiders, PvP still exists, things like frost nova being cut would be a massive nerf to our control.

[Imnick]

Any implication that Frost Nova would be removed is just inherently ridiculous, maybe you don't use it a lot in raids but it's still a historically iconic mage spell

[Hasted]

Frost Nova and CoC are pretty iconic class abilities for Mages. They still have a fair amount of uses, just not particularly as useful in a raid setting.

I suspect our CC tier will be reworked/removed. In PvE their applications are few and far between. I cant speak much for PvP this xpac but I doubt the frost ward is really used.

Cold Snap might find a new home, it seems pretty niche to PvP and a few number of other scenarios.

Our AoEs will most definitely be changed at some level. Flamestrike is only borderline useful as Frost/Fire and Blizzard's damage is pretty laughable. AE still feels powerful but I'm not sure that mindless AoE spells are really something that we should expect to see much more of.

Outside of some spells randomly being available to specs that don't use them I don't see very many that don't have their own meaningful applications.

[Deleted]

Yeah, because no iconic spell has ever been removed before...Not that I think it's going to get removed, but it's still a mediocre reason.

[Imnick]

It's about as sensible as pretending they'd remove Pyroblast though

[Polarthief]

Yeah, because no iconic spell has ever been removed before...Not that I think it's going to get removed, but it's still a mediocre reason.

To be fair, they could remove Frost Nova and give us a new spell with the same name. The name will forever exist on the Mage class though; it's not going anywhere. I mean, it's a well known fact that if you get too close to a Mage, you'll be frozen. Get too close a second time, and... well, you'll probably get a kill, assuming Blink is on cooldown.

[Terahertz]

I'd like to see Alter Time reworked to where it's only useful for utility and survivability, not damage. Would also love to see Fire Blast reworked for Frost so instead of Ice Lances shooting off your icicles, Fire Blast (or renamed to Frost Blast) will instead.

[Imnick]

They did say they only really want one or two damage cooldowns per spec, so pure utility alter time seems fairly likely at this point.

[Polarthief]

I'd like to see Alter Time reworked to where it's only useful for utility and survivability, not damage. Would also love to see Fire Blast reworked for Frost so instead of Ice Lances shooting off your icicles, Fire Blast (or renamed to Frost Blast) will instead.

They did say they only really want one or two damage cooldowns per spec, so pure utility alter time seems fairly likely at this point.

While I can't remember the source, they said it wasn't intended for damage in the first place, so put that from highly likely to unofficially confirmed w/ a missing source, and I cannot be happier for this. Always wanted to use AT for utility

[Obelisk Kai]

They did say they only really want one or two damage cooldowns per spec, so pure utility alter time seems fairly likely at this point.

Oh I missed that. Is that a point for my one spec cd, one cd from talents theory?

[Imnick]

It certainly lends it a bit more weight, though I think they'd try and stagger the cooldown times so that they don't match easily (admittedly hard for Arcane Power, at 1 minute 30).