Mage in WoD

[Polarthief]

or is all the evocation emphasis about a more gradual mana slope throughout combat?

Arcane will never be like that. The point of burning is to burst like mad or "go ham" as some people call it. You evocate it back up because it tanks your Mastery like crazy, and you want that back. We will never be at a point where we will casually hang around 50-80% mana and continue our rotation like normal, because that's a 20-50% loss of your Mastery's benefit (essentially, your mastery is multiplied by 0.5-0.8), and with Mastery being your #1 stat (1.05x through Attunement, AND a bonus to your Mastery through Mage Armor), you won't want that to happen for long.

As far as if burning is even a thing or not, that won't be fully known for sure, though Voltaa on the Mage Beta discussion says that we will have a burn/conserve, which I'm kinda excited to have a comeback of. I'm just not sure because ABl is no longer our big hitter like it used to be in LK/Cata.

[Deleted]

though Voltaa on the Mage Beta discussion says that we will have a burn/conserve

this would be awesome! /fingers crossed

[Zathrendar]

Agree with your first paragraph completely. It does seem like they're pushing Mages down the food chain just because they had a "long reign" of being dominant in PvP
What especially supports this is the fact other casters in the mage category are very much on-point performance wise right now. Spriest, Lock seem pretty damn strong

Is this affliction? It has always been a powerful spec. I'd be more interested if destro was in a good position. Regardless, this yo-yo type balancing is exactly what Blizzard should avoid.

[Deleted]

I'm probably not seeing it, but Mage feedback on the US beta forums in any department (PvE, PvP) is severely lacking. I mean, it's almost non existent. Have people stopped playing Mages in general, or something else is going on? If the class is that gimped in PvP (I can only speak from reading forums and watching videos/streams), there should be a lot more feedback on the forums.

[Orrin]

I'm probably not seeing it, but Mage feedback on the US beta forums in any department (PvE, PvP) is severely lacking. I mean, it's almost non existent. Have people stopped playing Mages in general, or something else is going on? If the class is that gimped in PvP (I can only speak from reading forums and watching videos/streams), there should be a lot more feedback on the forums.

Don't know, saw it too and was sad. Maybe bulk of it on Altered Time forum or something?
But considering how last beta went, do those threads matter at all?

[Deleted]

The developer response about the class issues has been almost non-existent for this beta, just as it was for MoP. As long as one spec shapes up to be competitive in PvE and workable in 3v3 (which in both cases seems to be frost), the rest of the specs can go burn.

If things get laughably bad in PvE there will be some quick hotfix to buff up the damage, just as it happened when 5.2 launched.

[Zathrendar]

It is a big issue though, if even your most viable spec is at best in the middle of the pack, or in some cases, at the bottom. They've de-fanged frost mages a lot, however it wasn't frost mages who were the issue so much as the arms race between them and warriors, and similarly for other classes, which was down to an excess of CC, anti-CC and mobility/anti-mobility tools. It looks like they've clamped down on one side of the equation, but not the other.

[Seneca]

Is this affliction? It has always been a powerful spec. I'd be more interested if destro was in a good position. Regardless, this yo-yo type balancing is exactly what Blizzard should avoid.

MoP wise, affli is better but destro is ok. The best destruction warlocks can reach gladiator range easily.

In WoD, destros suck. All I can tell you is that Chaos bolt (3sec cast) hits for 30k over an healthpool of 320k. Ofc, my target was standing still, because you are not able to cast in serious pvp contests anyway .

Melees can hit you over 50k with their finishers, not considering melee attacks, passive dots and so on.

Destruction locks do not stand a chance right now. They need to cast and they are not able to do it and, even if they could, their damage is subpar anyway. Also, melees and hybrids can tank your damage with their offheals. The situation is more bad than it sounds, trust me.

I'm probably not seeing it, but Mage feedback on the US beta forums in any department (PvE, PvP) is severely lacking. I mean, it's almost non existent. Have people stopped playing Mages in general, or something else is going on? If the class is that gimped in PvP (I can only speak from reading forums and watching videos/streams), there should be a lot more feedback on the forums.

Lots of them gave up.I had 3 friends of mine who where used to play mage. Now they play enha shaman, arms/fury warrior, affli lock. Just sayin.

But considering how last beta went, do those threads matter at all?

You nailed it, Orrin. People gave up, simple as that. There's a huge steel wall between us and our developers, and, differently from what someone at blizzard headquarters can think, their players are not dumb. In the last 4 years, my account has been frozen for, like, 3 years? So, lots of other accounts.

Maybe when they will drop to 1kk players, they will start focusing on what matters. They didn't get that, maybe. If, across all specs and classes, gameplay is not fun, balance is not fair, and, to a lesser extent, flavor is not respected, no matter how many battle pets they add, how many garrison improvements they add, how big ashran will be, how many recolored mounts will do, how many transmo we can do or how many items we can put on the storage, (etc.).

If the foundations are not solid, the house collapses, no matter how many painting there were inside the house.

Also, the fact that Blizzard has to manage 5 games at the same time doesn't help either, but, if they get more $, they should get more developers too, one could say.

[Zathrendar]

I'm still surprised they removed fel flame, in spite of all which you mention, considering it's never been that powerful but is a quick means of generating embers (or DF, for masochists) and doing modest damage on the move. I feared as much, considering they did not nerf melee CC/mobility nearly enough.

[TheWindWalker]

The point of burning is to burst like mad or "go ham" as some people call it. You evocate it back up because it tanks your Mastery like crazy, and you want that back.

I played Arcane in Cataclysm (in case the post wasn't blatant enough) I'm fairly aware of how a burn phase works. It felt horrible to be in conserve phase. Everytime you used Arcane Blast it felt like you were taking a risk that would effect your mana pool for the rest of the battle. If a missile proc needed release but you instinctively pressed AB again, it was horrible.

We will never be at a point where we will casually hang around 50-80% mana and continue our rotation like normal, because that's a 20-50% loss of your Mastery's benefit (essentially, your mastery is multiplied by 0.5-0.8), and with Mastery being your #1 stat (1.05x through Attunement, AND a bonus to your Mastery through Mage Armor), you won't want that to happen for long.

That was my favorite thing about Mists, though. Rune of Power, as annoying as being stationary could be, was a godsend. You were a living canon with infinite ammo that simply had a rhythm to follow and the numbers just soared.

In Cataclysm when you finished a battle you needed someone nearby with a towel to wipe the sweat from your forehead from all the tension.
In Mists when you finished a battle all you needed was a cigarette and some pants.

As far as if burning is even a thing or not, that won't be fully known for sure, though Voltaa on the Mage Beta discussion says that we will have a burn/conserve, which I'm kinda excited to have a comeback of. I'm just not sure because ABl is no longer our big hitter like it used to be in LK/Cata.

As was discussed in the dedicated thread: if Missiles is still our biggest nuke, I just can't see us having a Cata-style burn phase. It would have to be somewhat different.

[Polarthief]

Don't know, saw it too and was sad. Maybe bulk of it on Altered Time forum or something?
But considering how last beta went, do those threads matter at all?

There's quite a bit of it on Altered Time, and the lovely admins/mods over there gave Celestalon a VERY beautifully made summary of issues. He even directly asked for it. It fell on deaf ears, apparently, because nothing got changed.

It's almost like they're explicitly ignoring Mages simply because they "changed a bulk of our talents". Like that really fixes anything.

The developer response about the class issues has been almost non-existent for this beta, just as it was for MoP. As long as one spec shapes up to be competitive in PvE and workable in 3v3 (which in both cases seems to be frost), the rest of the specs can go burn.

Frost doesn't even look playable in PvP unless you won't have someone on you. Once word gets out that all you need to do is stick one player on a Mage and we're useless, we're not going to ever be picked for PvP.

Seriously, it's to the point where we need to know why Frost now has to hard cast to do anything, and why Fire still doesn't have Dispel Protection (And why the FUCK they nerfed Combustion, an already garbage spell in both aspects of gameplay, even further).

As was discussed in the dedicated thread: if Missiles is still our biggest nuke, I just can't see us having a Cata-style burn phase. It would have to be somewhat different.

The only reason it might be different in WoD is because we get to keep decent regen and still have Evo. Invocation and IW proved to be weaker for Arcane, hence why we couldn't ever do this on live.

Like all things though, once tuning is done and math starts rolling, we'll know for sure.

[Deleted]

To be fair it doesn't look like mages have been hit as hard as hunters / warriors this expansion. I - like I suspect many others - are just waiting to see what happens once it hits and the population at large is free to play around and feed back.

[Zathrendar]

Well warriors and hunters couldn't have been hit that hard, if they're coming out amongst the best performing PVP classes so far.

[Polarthief]

To be fair it doesn't look like mages have been hit as hard as hunters / warriors this expansion. I - like I suspect many others - are just waiting to see what happens once it hits and the population at large is free to play around and feed back.

Once the floodgates open and 6.0 is live/a lot more people are let into beta, nothing will change. We'll get the same feedback that will continue to go ignored, or no additional feedback because you know how the average player is; they probably don't even know the forums exist, much less wouldn't be able to give suitable feedback.

[Zathrendar]

There's quite a bit of it on Altered Time, and the lovely admins/mods over there gave Celestalon a VERY beautifully made summary of issues. He even directly asked for it. It fell on deaf ears, apparently, because nothing got changed.

It's almost like they're explicitly ignoring Mages simply because they "changed a bulk of our talents". Like that really fixes anything.

I suspect, when it comes to PVP, they base their decisions more on "feels", like "it feels mages are casting too many instants", than hard numbers, which play a bigger role in defining a class's performance in high-end PVE. However, if you move more damage to hard-cast spells, without offering the facility of casting on the move or reducing the prevalence and power of interrupts, you will simply gimp the class. It's all well and good to say that casters should cast more, but then give the appropriate rewards for doing so. At the moment it's all risk, little reward.

[Polarthief]

I suspect, when it comes to PVP, they base their decisions more on "feels", like "it feels mages are casting too many instants"

All casters are, for obvious fucking reasons though. Casting fillers doesn't do enough damage and is incredibly risky. There's literally no point to the risk if the reward isn't worth it.

However, if you move more damage to hard-cast spells, without offering the facility of casting on the move or reducing the prevalence and power of interrupts, you will simply gimp the class. It's all well and good to say that casters should cast more, but then give the appropriate rewards for doing so. At the moment it's all risk, little reward.

Haha, which I actually typed before reading this second quote XD

[Ralikon]

Is this affliction? It has always been a powerful spec. I'd be more interested if destro was in a good position. Regardless, this yo-yo type balancing is exactly what Blizzard should avoid.

I'm not certain on which one is the better performer right now, admittedly.

I do know that in several BGs, Locks are at the top, so for what ever that's worth.

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

Frost bolt healing water elemental has been removed.
"Cuz" tooltip bloat.

[The Kao]

Frost bolt healing water elemental has been removed.

Yeah just seen this.

I'm curious, while I wouldn't valiantly attack or defend this change, it's certainly not a vastly used heal by any means so I kinda understand why the devs would take it out. But then it has its uses, I currently solo Warlord Zon'ozz in DS by having the elemental tank him for 3 rounds while I stack orb debuffs on the boss, and frankly the elemental wouldn't survive even one round without the heal. I guess fights like this will be a lot easier after pre patch and at level 100, but still... it removes possibilities to play the class that didn't have an actual impact on regular gameplay, and for what exactly? Not sure what to make of this.

I wish I could post this on their US forums and actually get an answer.

[Ralikon]

Frost bolt healing water elemental has been removed.
"Cuz" tooltip bloat.

Just more iconic sheeit they're removing