6.0 Mage Speculation & Paranoia

[Akraen]

I'm "vehemently opposed" to the concept of pretending I can choose between things that are completely mandatory, if they gave us literally all the old cookie cutter talents as passives we got by levelling up on top of their current talent system then I'd be totally fine with that


none of those things you just listed were choices you could make in the old talent trees so I'm not sure why they were even there

You seem to think I'm advocating a return to the trees how they were. No, I'm advocating talent trees that actually do have choice.

We don't have much choice in what we use now, but we could!

[Imnick]

It'd be great if we could have a 183 talents talent tree which allowed us to make meaningful decisions, but how likely do you think that is based on their ability to give us meaningful choices from an 18 talents talent grid ?

I'm going to stick for advocating the thing they might be able to get close to doing :P

[Milamber]

They should just replace the level 90 talents with 3 utility talents.

[Akraen]

It'd be great if we could have a 183 talents talent tree which allowed us to make meaningful decisions, but how likely do you think that is based on their ability to give us meaningful choices from an 18 talents talent grid ?

I'm going to stick for advocating the thing they might be able to get close to doing :P

Hehe that's totally reasonable :P

I think a few things really could become baseline. Keep in mind these are suggestions. Don't need people coming at me as though I've written the latest patch notes.

Tier 1:
Presence of Mind: 1.5 min cooldown / Instant
When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 sec becomes an instant cast spell. Increases your movement speed by 30% until consumed. This spell is not on the global cooldown.

Blazing Speed: No change

Ice Floes: No change

Tier 2:
Temporal Shield: No change

Flameglow: Passive
Absorbs the light of nearby heals, healing you for 15% of the healing done to friendly targets within 10 yards up to a maximum of 5% of your health per heal.

Ice Barrier: No change (remove from GCD?), but add this glyph:

Glyph of Ice Barrier: Your ice barrier will now prevent the next interrupt, incapacitate, stun, or fear effect but will absorb half its damage.

Tier 3:
Ring of Frost: Become Baseline, replace with:
Warp Space: 2 sec cast, 2 min cooldown
Up to 10 enemies within 10 yds are teleported to the target location within 45 yds.

Ice Ward: Passive, triggers Hypothermia
Upon reaching 25% of your maximum health, all enemies within 10 yds will become frozen in place for 5 sec and the cooldown of your Presence of Mind, Blazing Speed, or Ice Floes will reset.

Remove Frostjaw, replace with:
Blast Wave: instant, 1.5 min cooldown
A wave of heat radiates outward from the target location. All enemies caught within the blast are slowed by 50% for 3 sec and cannot benefit from movement speed increases for the duration.

Tier 4:
Greater Invisibility: No changes

Cauterize: No changes

Cold Snap: Instant, 3 min cooldown
Add passive effect: If fatal damage would be dealt to you, encases you in a block of ice at 1% of your maximum health and places Ice Block on cooldown. This effect cannot occur during hypothermia or if Ice Block is on cooldown. It does not place Cold Snap on cooldown.
Active effect: no changes

Tier 5:
Remove Nether Tempest
Remove Living Bomb
Remove Frost Bomb

Add: Spellfire Tempest
Instant
Modifies your Mage Bomb, allowing it to be placed on unlimited targets and deal 3900 (+292.32% of Spell power) spellfire damage over 12 sec. Each time Spellfire Tempest deals damage, an additional 50% of that damage is also dealt to a random target within 10 yards.

Add: Frostfire Bomb
Instant
Modifies your Mage Bomb, allowing it to be placed on two targets and deal 5166 (+321.44% of Spell power) frostfire damage over 18 sec. Each time the target takes a tick of damage, there is a 15% chance their movement speed will be slowed by 30% for 2 sec.

Add: Spellfrost Implosion
Instant, 10 sec cooldown
Modifies your Mage Bomb, allowing it to be placed on one target causing 4600 (+367% of Spell power) spellfrost damage after 6 sec. 33% of the damage will be dealt in a flurry of spellfrost crystals that will hit up to 6 enemies within 10yds of the target. All affected targets are slowed by 70% for 2 sec.

Tier 6:
Remove Invocation
Remove Incanter's Ward

Change Rune of Power:
Passive:
After a successful spell cast, a rune of power with a radius of 8yds draws itself underneath the caster. While standing in this Rune mana regeneration is increased by 75% and spell damage is increased by 8%. The caster will not lose this benefit if their mirror images stand in this rune and the mirror images will last for an additional 12 sec if standing in the rune. This rune fades if neither mage or images are standing in it for 6 sec.

Add Pact of Flame:
Passive:
After a successful spell cast, a large circle of flame visible only to the caster is centered around the target, causing the damage taken from the caster on all targets within 40yd to be increased by 10%. Periodically bursts of flame will empower the caster, regenerating mana. Mirror images will also be able to cast flamestrike when active.

Add Icy Ground:
Passive:
After a successful spell cast, many ice crystals will develop on the ground in random crystalline formations within 45yds. Standing on the ice crystals will amplify the caster's multistrike and cleave damage by 12%. Periodically the crystals will explode, restoring mana to the caster. Mirror Images will run to these crystals and provide the caster the benefit of standing in them and the images are now able to cast while moving.


These are all just my dreams.

[Statix]

Just remove Invocation and Rune of Power from the game and give us something more interesting. I feel like a Dragonball Z character with those stupid talents... I have to power up before I can fight at full strength. During raiding it's manageable, but during questing/dailies it's a major pain in the ass. Atleast make Rune of Power instant.

The level 100 talents look interesting, but I won't even consider playing my Mage if Invocation and Rune of Power aren't removed or redesigned. Talents should be optional buffs, mandatory rotation abilities or optional fun abilities, not mandatory buffs.

[Akraen]

They should just replace the level 90 talents with 3 utility talents.

No. One of the key reasons I play a mage is to not have to fall into the trap of utility.

It's the only class left.

[mrgreenthump]

snip

Only ;E thing there is the Pact of Flame radius, never again I want to be forced to stay at 30 yd to do max dps when my range is 40yd

[Akraen]

Only ;E thing there is the Pact of Flame radius, never again I want to be forced to stay at 30 yd to do max dps when my range is 40yd

I guess there's no reason why it couldn't be 40yds.

I was really just trying to come up with some left-field ideas here they'd need a lot of work to be viable. I would love the active environment-shaping that the talent tree would provide and the little side bonuses of making our mirror images do something.

[Imnick]

A 40 yard radius circle is quite a lot of fire!

[Akraen]

A 40 yard radius circle is quite a lot of fire!

Only visible to the mage would help, picture this:


but 40yds around. Would make the mage really feel like they're burning the world

[Imnick]

I'm not complaining, I just think you'd probably end up with a real issue of it clipping through walls of encounter rooms and the like :P
Automatic rune placement on casts isn't a bad idea though, I mean considering it means one unboosted cast per movement period it's pretty similar to the one gcd per movement period cost we have at present.

Not sure it's entirely necessary when you have a circle of 80 yards diameter but I guess as it applies to the two others there's no point it not being on all of them.

[Akraen]

The rune could constantly draw itself outward. So the longer you stand in one place, the larger it becomes. Could be cool if you have a running phase and a standing phase. By the time you'd get to a running phase on Durumu, for example, your rune could be the size of the room!

[Polarthief]

That's kind of a waste since they're already building those type of bonuses into the leveling (in lieu of new spells). Like the example they gave was 35% more damage on Fireball.

Slice and Dice: Now Passive
Chakra: Lower Cooldown
Fireball: More Damage. Seriously? -_-

In all seriousness though with the supposed new relevant topic, I'm not sure how I feel about all our spells being stolen from other NPCs/places. What's next? Giving us Flame Wreath to launch players/NPCs 200 yards into the air, but it does nothing if the targets don't move? :X

[Imnick]

I am hoping not all ten of our things are "more damage" yeah...

[mrgreenthump]

Slice and Dice: Now Passive
Chakra: Lower Cooldown
Fireball: More Damage. Seriously? -_-

I think it was more abt showing examples of thing they are doing.. Chakra is a CD, Fireball is a filler and SnD is Maintanence buff. Now certainly they wanna get rid of SnD it seems. So rather than remove it, it is now passive. Mages prolly won't have something like that. Infact mages don't have much of anything that can be applied like Chakra or SnD. Maybe Flame Strike and our core CC spells.

[Frost1129]

Snip

Just some comments on these.

Tier 1- From a Fire perspective, PoM is way too strong in this tier. PoM also fits really oddly here; it really isn't a movement talent, it's a burst DPS cooldown and will always be used as such. Kinda similar to how AT has some cool implications with what it effects, but because it effects DPS it will always be used for DPS. Maybe the solution here is to move PoM into another tier to give it real competition and make another movement spell?

Tier 2 - I like the change to Flameglow, and removing Ice barrier GCD would go a good way to make it competitive with TS. Maybe flameglow's passive extra healing has a events/second cap on it though?

Tier 3 - Warp Space looks bad ass. Might need tuning in PvP, but I dig it. I could see Ice Ward being gamed for DPS hardcore if PoM stays in it's current form.

Tier 4 - I also like Cold Snap a lot. I'm not sure how it's not superior to cauterize in every situation though.

Tier 5 - Those look like our current bombs with different names? Unless you've changed the base dmg/SP-coeffs. to change their roles.

Tier 6 - I actually really like the current RoP, so I don't feel like it needs changing. Pact of Flame is a passive Invocation, I'm guessing? Icy Ground sounds like a huge pain in the ass.

[Akraen]

Just some comments on these.

Tier 1- From a Fire perspective, PoM is way too strong in this tier. PoM also fits really oddly here; it really isn't a movement talent, it's a burst DPS cooldown and will always be used as such. Kinda similar to how AT has some cool implications with what it effects, but because it effects DPS it will always be used for DPS. Maybe the solution here is to move PoM into another tier to give it real competition and make another movement spell?

Tier 2 - I like the change to Flameglow, and removing Ice barrier GCD would go a good way to make it competitive with TS. Maybe flameglow's passive extra healing has a events/second cap on it though?

Tier 3 - Warp Space looks bad ass. Might need tuning in PvP, but I dig it. I could see Ice Ward being gamed for DPS hardcore if PoM stays in it's current form.

Tier 4 - I also like Cold Snap a lot. I'm not sure how it's not superior to cauterize in every situation though.

Tier 5 - Those look like our current bombs with different names? Unless you've changed the base dmg/SP-coeffs. to change their roles.

Tier 6 - I actually really like the current RoP, so I don't feel like it needs changing. Pact of Flame is a passive Invocation, I'm guessing? Icy Ground sounds like a huge pain in the ass.

Eh I didn't do any tuning or anything, just wanted to get the ideas out there.

Bomb changes are good for spell lockouts and fixing our frost bomb issue and some nitpicky things I've had with them this entire time.

Cold Snap's powerful but it has a longer cooldown.

My L90 talents are an illustration of how mages can change the environments they are in. Icy Ground takes it a step further and lets you interact with the environment. Then lets mirror images serve as a dynamic cooldown to make it not become a movement issue.

Having all the L90 talents change mirror images a bit could be fun!

[Frost1129]

Eh I didn't do any tuning or anything, just wanted to get the ideas out there.

Bomb changes are good for spell lockouts and fixing our frost bomb issue and some nitpicky things I've had with them this entire time.

Cold Snap's powerful but it has a longer cooldown.

My L90 talents are an illustration of how mages can change the environments they are in. Icy Ground takes it a step further and lets you interact with the environment. Then lets mirror images serve as a dynamic cooldown to make it not become a movement issue.

Having all the L90 talents change mirror images a bit could be fun!

I didnt notice the longer CD on Cold Snap. I see now. Interesting.

In regards to Icy ground, what do you imagine cleave damage as being? NT is clearly a cleave, but is IB spreading of DoTs and the glyph of splitting covered under that?

It could actually be pretty cool if you had choices as fire - If you were going to do a bunch of DoT/Combustion spreading, Icy Grounds. if not, Pact of Flame.

[Akraen]

I mean the new stats coming next expansion, multistrike and cleave. Think of it as if you had KTT and FCoR equipped today, it would boost that.

And yeah I'm really going for choices that don't make you feel like you're completely sacrificing spec identity. Give L75 an elementalist mixture theme and it allows L90 to be more than arcane/arcane/arcane. Each option would be viable in any situation but ideal in specific situations.

And it would be an opportunity for the mage to see himself growing in power with a rune that draws itself and becomes gigantic, ever-growing. Or to see their world in flames, encircling their enemies in a massive ring of fire that empowers them. Or the mage sees the ground below them freeze and fracture, making the air cold and everything feel like it's shattering.

[Imnick]

Honestly the rune expanding over time while standing in it just seems like the opposite of what you'd want out of the rune, it gets biggest when you don't need to move and stays smallest when you do...