Incanter's Ward getting a PvP Nerf

[Polarthief]

Source: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...lone-for-once/

We are aware that there are many players who have issues dealing with Mage burst capabilities, however we feel that the main problem right now isn't simply Deep Freeze or Frozen orb directly, but rather the damage increase caused by Incanter's Ward. When stacked with other damage increasing effects such as procs and Frost Mage mastery, it can add up to an additional 30% damage multiplier, which can be quite devastating against many opponents. Because Incanter's Ward is one of the bigger reasons for high Mage burst, we have plans to make changes to it in patch 5.3.

In an upcoming change to the patch 5.3 patch notes you will see that we are looking to change the maximum spell damage increase from 30% to 15% but have the effect duration increased to 25 seconds, up from 15 seconds. This will lower the damage coming from Frozen Orb, Frost Bomb and other skills during a Mages burst window, but that damage multiplier will just last for a bit longer.

(Original post modified with bold for TL;DR)

Um... Alright.

Curious about the PvE effect on this. Might be worth trying on bosses with perma raid damage.

Kinda funny that ALL THREE L90 talents now give 15% increased damage, isn't it?

[Deleted]

Incanter's Ward was already relatively close to the others in terms of dps so this change makes it very attractive. This proves once again how flawed the lvl 90 mage talents really are. They are now three different ways of increasing your dmg 15% all with 100% uptime in theory.

Rune of power is a flawed to the core, this thing would require you to stand still for an entire fight and is very clunky, this talent had only ever been attractive to arcane and worthless to the other speccs. This ability cripples your movability and makes the hunters old Sniper training look easy on the mobility. This ability should be removed or made into a arcane cooldown with maybe a 15 seconds duration.

Invocation is something that makes you cast something just to keep up a buff, much like rogues old Hunger for Blood. Blizzard removed Hunger for Blood because they didn't like the "have to cast something just do keep a buff up" and they should remove invocation as well.

Incanter's Ward feels much like the old Owlkin Frenzy, where you will willingly stand in fire or take damage to increase your damage, which was also something blizzard stated long ago was not a playstyle they didn't like.

They should simply scrap the 90 talents completely and make something fun there instead, getting your 90 talent should be something fun and special and it kinda is for most classes. When I leveled to 90 with my mage the feeling I got was "Oh crap, now I have to deal with one of these hassles." I know it's too late for a chnage this far into the expansion but for next one I hope blizzard just scrap the 90 talents all together.

[Jawless Jones]

i really dont see ANY of the 90 mage talents making it into the next expac tbh...

beefsupreme nailed it on the head, blizzard has already given reasons in the past why they removed similar spells

i guess they rushed the 90 mage talents/couldn't think of anything better

[Deleted]

Yeah mage talents really felt rushed and not thought out for MOP. Mostly in the form of lvl 90 talents, the bombs (who would take frost bomb as a fire mage and vice versa) and scorch being a talent when it should of been fire baseline.

[Tiga]

At this point, I agree that they should scrap the level 90 talents and start over.

I posted some quick math on the new version of IW on the PvP topic with the blue post and on the EU mage forum. The problem is that you spend a GCD to cast the shield, which then causes you to lose the 6% passive damage buff. You then wait (and hope) for incoming damage. If it doesn't come, you lose a whole 25s cycle of the passive damage bonus and you have completely wasted a global cooldown on a shield that didn't even absorb damage. If it takes a few seconds for the damage to hit, the best scenario average damage bonus is still under 9%. That's not enough compared to the 6% passive.

The talent might survive if they take it off the GCD, increase the shield duration and allow the passive damage buff to continue while the shield is active. That way if you are taking regular damage, there's no GCD penalty and there are no gaps in the DPS increase to lower the overall average. So my suggestion is: non-GCD shield, 12 second duration, passive active if the shield is active or the ability is not on cooldown. Waiting 6 seconds for the shield to expire, this would amount to a 31 second cycle: 12% damage boost on average. 12 seconds means you still have to time the ability with incoming damage. The closer you time it, the closer you get to the maximum potential of 15%. If you fail to take any damage at all, you have 12 seconds of 106% damage and 13 seconds of 100% damage for an average of 102.88%, which is still a loss compared to the passive (and any other L90 talents when used even half-intelligently), so the talent wouldn't be a "macro to use on cooldown" ability.

[Polarthief]

Guys, we're ALL well aware that Blizzard fucked up with our "Ultimate" tier, and if they actually made it into Level 95, there'd be a second flood of pissed of Mages posting threads on their forums. While I do appreciate listing out ways among the talents, I'd like to get a discussion going purely about using IW competitively, not "omg the L90 talents suck yadda yadda" which 90%+ of Mages agree with already, myself included

With this change, I think it's safe to say that on a few bosses, we'll probably benefit more from it than the other choices. The only problem I see compared to Invo is for an extra global, the duration is over doubled, plus there's no need to take damage using it. Granted, I'm curious to know if your shield breaks a bit late, what happens when IW is OFF of cooldown, and you still have the 15% damage bonus? Do you get 21% bonus damage (or 21.9% if multiplied), or do you only get 15%?

Here's a small list of some things we should try to answer, or at least discuss:

- Does the passive stack with the active if shield breaks slightly late? If it does, will the passive and/or active need to be nerfed? Should the damage, durations, or cooldowns be nerfed? Should they buff Invo/RoP instead?
- Need theorycrafting on the competitiveness between IW and Invo. RoP not needed as it's only used for Arcane in addition to being a whole mess with Mana and its Mastery. RoP flat out FAILS for Fire/Frost unless it's a 0 movement fight, and by 0, I mean literally Patchwerk (and there are 0 literally Patchwerk fights in ToT AFAIK)
-- Does this (overall) make IW the new go-to choice for Fire/Frost? It was already pretty powerful, but now it's even better [referring to PvE, of course].

[Tiga]

The 15%+6% is valid, but I personally doubt that they will stack.

Can you think of a scenario where a potential 25 seconds of 115% damage for one GCD is better than a guaranteed 60 seconds of 115% damage for two GCDs worth of cast time? I guess the answer is that if there are no 2xGCD windows where you can stand and cast reliably to gain invoker's energy.

IW is currently not powerful. In special cases it can be better than invocation, but those are really rare cases. In most fights, it's probably a slight loss. It's more fun than invocation, but that's about the only benefit for most fights. With the announced change, it's never better and almost always worse. In other words, a dead talent for PvE.

It will be a much closer call in PvP. Somehow, I have stopped caring about PvP. I've accumulated almost 4K conquest points by doing random BGs and haven't felt like buying any PvP gear at all. (I think it's mostly because of what is fashionably now called "toxic behavior".)

[Polarthief]

Can you think of a scenario where a potential 25 seconds of 115% damage for one GCD is better than a guaranteed 60 seconds of 115% damage for two GCDs worth of cast time? I guess the answer is that if there are no 2xGCD windows where you can stand and cast reliably to gain invoker's energy.

IW is currently not powerful.

Erm... on some fights where you lose even a couple seconds of Invoker's Energy, it turns out less than IW IIRC.

Whoever theorycrafted that, please reply, lol. Too lazy to TC it.

[Deleted]

IW is now useless for PvE as Arcane, sigh. Arcane going to be limited to RoP yet again.

Even using it nearly on-CD and gaining the full 30% buff was ~ same damage increase overall as Invoker's/RoP.

Increased duration won't fix as you can't guarantee proccing it on CD every CD, there aren't fights like Garalon this tier.

[Tiga]

If you refer to the topic on this forum, a lot of the math there was completely wrong. Don't assume anyone knows their math unless you check it yourself. Don't trust me either. Go the extra mile and check the calculations.

One of the key benefits of IW was that when it was up, it was truly a good DPS buff, so you could try to use your highest damage cooldowns then. When it becomes a nearly flat 15% buff, it loses that quality compared to Invocation. The new version is just a bad version of Invocation that gives you a tiny bit of mobility in trade for even poorer reliability.

[Polarthief]

If you refer to the topic on this forum, a lot of the math there was completely wrong. Don't assume anyone knows their math unless you check it yourself. Don't trust me either. Go the extra mile and check the calculations.

One of the key benefits of IW was that when it was up, it was truly a good DPS buff, so you could try to use your highest damage cooldowns then. When it becomes a nearly flat 15% buff, it loses that quality compared to Invocation. The new version is just a bad version of Invocation that gives you a tiny bit of mobility in trade for even poorer reliability.

Well... Poop.

Gotta love how many nerfs to PvP have affected Mages in PvE thus far. Some of which (like DF/Frost Bomb duration) were reverted over the course of a patch but still. It's getting pretty annoying.

Not to mention first Flameglow and now IW, both in the same week.

[mrgreenthump]

The change makes the shield proc even worse for PvE than before, Now you get 25 secs of 15%, but for what, a GCD and few sec window for the shield to actually break, while still the passive goes off cause IW is on cd. I had some fun with IW as it did do biggest bursts for some fights with good raid damage going on, but now, I wont even touch it in PvE.

Funny thing is though some people were using IW just cause of the passive, barely touching the cd at all unless good nuke timings with damage taken. This just makes it so that people will just use it cause of the passive..

[Deleted]

I'm really amazed that we have a free mage change PTR but we will have a lot of last minute change for PvP purpose.
What is the purpose of PTR if these change is made a short time before releasing it (2-3 week if not next week) and character copy is bugged.

We have a lot of PVE complain, some serious scaling problem, a class that are good only in a 2 yard circle, ...
And all they announce is PvP change.

I'm really amazed.

[Alias Node]

They already made it dispellable, how much more hand holding do people need? Cause it to throw a giant arrow over the mage followed by warning sound and stun the mage for 10 sec? Or cause you to lose half your hp rounded down on use? This talent went from being meh ok for arcane pve to worthless with this change, strictly for the lose of any and all mana regen for the 25 sec duation. Ar least in its current state the bonus 15% makes up for the regen by allowing smart use. If all i am going to get is a flat 15% (not evev guaranteed) at the cost of no mana regen, might as well run invocation, but we all know that is an ass of a talent for arc.

[gallamann]

I am sure Lhiv will run the math, my gut tells me it is still utter crap compared to Invocation. End of the day, it really has no impact on PvE as the consensus was already Invocation unless you are Arcane then RoP, IW is for PvP. In PvP only an idiot would let you channel Invocation or stand in a Rune, hence IW is PvP talent. With PvE, the 90 talents are sheer annoyance, Invocation should always win in that environment simply because it is the least annoying of the 3.

[Proakryt]

The change makes IW more or less a gimped version of Invocation. Currently IW's benefit is a much higher burst capability. Sure the +damage bonus is a short duration but at 30% you can get off a great combustion. It feels like Blizz is trying to make everything equal in in the final talent tier with equal damage benefit across the board. Problem is that Invocation remains the easiest talent to maintain properly; and you lose basically nothing by choosing the easier talent. Why choose a harder to use talent for equal performance? Only considering PvE nothing will compete with Invocation with this change; RoP is too limiting, IW requires more babysitting. Comes down to a ~2.5 second cast for a minute of +15% damage. Pretty hard to beat in terms of throughput and ease of use.

[Tiga]

I exchanged some emails with Lhivera earlier today. He wasn't considering the GCD time cost initially, so it seemed fine to him. I hope I got him to understand that it's going to be an utterly worthless talent for PvE if the only change is what was said in the blue post. I calculated a quick scenario where a during a raid fight the ability was used during constant raid damage 5 times, 9 times with slightly delayed raid damage (6 second delay) and 5 times where the mage failed to take any damage. The average DPS boost turned out to be 6.2%, so only fractionally better than the passive.

[Alias Node]

Dont forget the lack of mana regen during it for arcane play + less bonus damage

[mrgreenthump]

Dont forget the lack of mana regen during it for arcane play + less bonus damage

given the passive is only 6% less mana than being in a RoP 100%.. So as arcane you wouldn't really use the cd unless some really important few sec nuke was inc.. Now you just simply don't use the cd.

[Deleted]

now, all 3 L90 is really the same : 15% buff. The only difference is how to obtain it : santing in a circle, channeling for 3s or taking 10k damage in 4s.
The uptime is globally the same.

For 5.4, there's to 2 solutions : nerf it to 5% or make them a 15% passive.