Mage Free-For-All Thread?

[Huevos]

I really don't think it's too much to expect to 90 talents to be changed to a small degree to allow for a bit more flexibility when choosing them. What I think prevents us from getting an overhaul - and I mean overhaul - is that it requires changes to pretty much every other spell since we're balanced around the buffs that the talents provide. But the problem is that the buffs are too difficult to keep up without a very specific style of encounter.

So just make them easier to work with. Why not make rune of power bigger, or make it like a "rod" of power, where there is an 8 yd radius we can move around in, like a totem? And if it's just too much to design a new spell, what with the artwork and icons and crap, just make the rune have a larger radius. Probably would look retarded as hell, especially if you have 3+ mages in the raid, but I'd still take it.

I'm not sure how much of a change IW needs - I'm ok with it having its PvP niche, and it's probably difficult to balance for PvE anyway because of the fact that it's strong for PvP. Maybe allowing the buff to last longer than the CD on the spell, so there is some room for error?

I'm not actually suggesting these changes, but if I can spend 3 minutes and come up with a change that's even marginally better, how hard can it be for someone that does this for a living to find something suitable?

[Methusula]

I'm not actually suggesting these changes, but if I can spend 3 minutes and come up with a change that's even marginally better, how hard can it be for someone that does this for a living to find something suitable?

That's the most maddening part. If someone can come up with changes that aren't OP or game breaking in three minutes, why the flying fudge(pardon my language) can't devs who do it for a living? The answer? They don't care. They just flat out don't care. As long as people still play the class, it's fine by them.

[Nightfall]

I really don't think it's too much to expect to 90 talents to be changed to a small degree to allow for a bit more flexibility when choosing them. What I think prevents us from getting an overhaul - and I mean overhaul - is that it requires changes to pretty much every other spell since we're balanced around the buffs that the talents provide. But the problem is that the buffs are too difficult to keep up without a very specific style of encounter.

Well, it didn't hold them back the last time - they just buffed our bombs by 40%. Besides they could make band-aid upgrades to these talents if they consider an overhaul too big for 5.4. RoP could have a bigger radius or become passively applied under mage's feet upon standing for a couple of seconds.

However a massive Warlock t90 overhaul makes me wonder. KJC was OP, so they changed it a bit, Ok, Blizzard likes to nerf OP stuff. But they also reworked MF so that it's a better competitor to KJC. Then they even completely redesigned AV twice! Warlocks had an OP ability, a decent one and the one with marginal PVP use - all got redesigned. Mages have the least intrusive Invocation which everyone takes, useless RoP (which brings Arcane down and is not even considered anywhere outside of Arcane PVE) and the weakest one - IW, which is taken in PVP as you can't successfully use other 2 talents. No changes.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

You mean, Fire Mages used to pay me to give them Focus Magic? Yessss. Rather, it was a set of rules:
1. 2 Arcane + 1 Fire = Focus Magic on Fire and on our Moonkin GM
2. 1 Arcane + 1 Fire = Focus Magic on Fire if the Moonkin GM doesn't notice
3. 2 Arcane = Focus Magic on eachother and tolerate the funny and random GM insults
4. 2 Arcane alternative = I give Focus Magic to the GM, the other Mage gives it to me
5. 3 Arcane = Focus on eachother and tolerate the funny and random GM insults

Oh god, Focus Magic. I remember doing that to other Mages >_> It was kind of nice.....



Kind of.

[Frost1129]

Focus Magic was one part cool, one part "Please let there be another mage so our S.priest/warlock/boomkin don't cry when I don't give it to them"

[Polarthief]

I'm not actually suggesting these changes, but if I can spend 3 minutes and come up with a change that's even marginally better, how hard can it be for someone that does this for a living to find something suitable?

That or they plain don't give a shit, which is how I've felt through this whole expansion.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

That or they plain don't give a shit, which is how I've felt through this whole expansion.

You can believe what you want. I really doubt it's *They don't give a shit*. You can not say anything and still care.

[Huevos]

Well, it didn't hold them back the last time - they just buffed our bombs by 40%. Besides they could make band-aid upgrades to these talents if they consider an overhaul too big for 5.4. RoP could have a bigger radius or become passively applied under mage's feet upon standing for a couple of seconds.

However a massive Warlock t90 overhaul makes me wonder. KJC was OP, so they changed it a bit, Ok, Blizzard likes to nerf OP stuff. But they also reworked MF so that it's a better competitor to KJC. Then they even completely redesigned AV twice! Warlocks had an OP ability, a decent one and the one with marginal PVP use - all got redesigned. Mages have the least intrusive Invocation which everyone takes, useless RoP (which brings Arcane down and is not even considered anywhere outside of Arcane PVE) and the weakest one - IW, which is taken in PVP as you can't successfully use other 2 talents. No changes.

Well the bomb fix just affected the bombs. If they were to redesign the 90 talents in a way that divorced them from the damage buff they'd have to compensate by changing every spell that deals damage, which you could see being problematic, especially if scaling is affected, and then again considering the importance of some spells (i.e. Combustion).

Regarding the lock changes, I actually think those were just as in need of a fix as ours, but for a different reason. It's easy to say that locks were "in a good place", but that only means that locks liked the talents, not that Blizzard was OK with them. They weren't in a good place in terms of having a balanced ability, KJC was entirely too good. Casters should have to give up damage in exchange for full mobility.

What's annoying is that when you consider their other design philosophy regarding talents (relative equality in terms of affect on output), they failed with our 90 talents, and they seem to have prioritized fixing this problem also for locks ahead of fixing ours, even though locks (I assume) have better distribution with demo often taking MF since it has mobility on demand and thus less use for KJC. Arcane obviously brings RoP into play, but Arcane typically isn't played unless you're just farming.

[Sophiq]

I really don't see why you guys are complaining. If you don't like the class reroll.

[Methusula]

I really don't see why you guys are complaining. If you don't like the class reroll.

You made an account just to say that? Maybe those of us who have played a Mage since vanilla have a BIT too much invested to just reroll.

[Polarthief]

I really don't see why you guys are complaining. If you don't like the class reroll.

Ffs, I wish anyone who says shit like this gets punched in the nads/areas-it-really-hurts-females-to-be-punched-at in the nearby future.

It's people like you that would rather throw away something that's broken rather than try to fix it. Drives me insane.

[Huevos]

I really don't see why you guys are complaining. If you don't like the class reroll.

We do like the class, or we would reroll. But there are still things that we would like to see improved. Ever have a job you didn't like? Even if you wanted to quit, and had another job lined up, any person with common sense would ask for what's missing before just quitting.

[Nightfall]

Well the bomb fix just affected the bombs. If they were to redesign the 90 talents in a way that divorced them from the damage buff they'd have to compensate by changing every spell that deals damage, which you could see being problematic, especially if scaling is affected, and then again considering the importance of some spells (i.e. Combustion).

The goal of bombs buff was to boost Mage damage evenly across the board for all specs, it wasn't due to bombs being underused or underpowered. However I agree, the removal of damage buffs from t90 is not a trivial matter. But I'm sure it is entirely possible to come up with new talents that provide roughly the same ~12% overall damage boost as the current ones. But now that I think of it, any t90 reworks that go away from the current core design will do unspeakable horrors to Arcane mana-management. They'll have to have passive IW mana regen built into Arcane or make Evocation have no/lesser CD.

[Polarthief]

We do like the class, or we would reroll. But there are still things that we would like to see improved. Ever have a job you didn't like? Even if you wanted to quit, and had another job lined up, any person with common sense would ask for what's missing before just quitting.

Ever eat food that just NEEDED salt really badly? Yeah I have. I didn't throw my food away and just settle for cereal instead, I added that fucking salt and it tasted GREAT.

This is the same thing. Mages are the first dish that needs salt (changes). You're telling us to throw away our food and to eat something else instead, but we REALLY want to eat our current dish; we just need salt.

[Methusula]

The goal of bombs buff was to boost Mage damage evenly across the board for all specs, it wasn't due to bombs being underused or underpowered. However I agree, the removal of damage buffs from t90 is not a trivial matter. But I'm sure it is entirely possible to come up with new talents that provide roughly the same ~12% overall damage boost as the current ones. But now that I think of it, any t90 reworks that go away from the current core design will do unspeakable horrors to Arcane mana-management. They'll have to have passive IW mana regen built into Arcane or make Evocation have no/lesser CD.

They could just give Arcane RoP baseline that functioned like Sniper Training did.

[Nightfall]

They could just give Arcane RoP baseline that functioned like Sniper Training did.

Or that, yes. But that will restrict Arcane Mages from moving at all, not just inside the rune, so some 10-15% damage reduction might be nice so that you could allow yourself to not move out of weak-medium AOE damage.

Or the ramp up time could be decreased to like 2 seconds.

[Penguirrel]

my favorite video based on mages is definitely




just rewatched and it still makes me laugh

[Huevos]

The goal of bombs buff was to boost Mage damage evenly across the board for all specs, it wasn't due to bombs being underused or underpowered. However I agree, the removal of damage buffs from t90 is not a trivial matter. But I'm sure it is entirely possible to come up with new talents that provide roughly the same ~12% overall damage boost as the current ones. But now that I think of it, any t90 reworks that go away from the current core design will do unspeakable horrors to Arcane mana-management. They'll have to have passive IW mana regen built into Arcane or make Evocation have no/lesser CD.

I think best case scenario for long term is that our talents are no longer tied to a necessary buff. Blizzard realized how much warlocks hated ISF in destro, and while that was significantly more annoying to cast than evo since it only lasted I think 15 seconds, the idea is the same, so it's nonsensical for us to have to do this. Spending time doing 0 damage just to get a necessary buff is not fun. I occasionally cast an evo before Invoker's Energy expired in frost because I might get unlucky on procs and end up oom, but the only time I've ever cast it in fire was because the buff wore off.

I agree, they could find a less boring/tedious way for us to give ourselves the buff in the short term, so we can at least play the spec we want and not what the encounter dictates, and then redesign them when they have more time.

[Mastamage]

That or they plain don't give a shit, which is how I've felt through this whole expansion.

I made the "mistake" of tweeting GC that he and the Devs don't know what they're doing anymore when it comes to mages. He replied with "my intent to come on twitter is not so you can insult me". Apparently he doesn't like being told that he's slacking.

Criticism is good, even if its hard to swallow. How else are we going to get stuff done? Well, we probably won't by the looks of it...

[Frost1129]

I made the "mistake" of tweeting GC that he and the Devs don't know what they're doing anymore when it comes to mages. He replied with "my intent to come on twitter is not so you can insult me". Apparently he doesn't like being told that he's slacking.

Criticism is good, even if its hard to swallow. How else are we going to get stuff done? Well, we probably won't by the looks of it...

To be fair, that type of comment is less in the realm of criticism, more in the insult realm.