Patch 5.2 PTR Mage Changes

[Polarthief]

New patch notes nerf improved counterspell omfg, if mages were shit from a few hours ago.... now they're even worse shit.

Also, they gutted frost mage dps in PVE since we can't even get fingers from bosses through pet freeze. SERIOUSLY?!?!?!? Why is blizzard taking away everything from frost and fire and FORCING us to play that fucking redheaded stepchild shit spec named arcane? Ugh, I give up

I'm kinda pissed about losing my silence, but oh well.

It says "Sucessful Freezes". I don't know if that means "you hit a target" or "you froze a target". Kinda curious tbh.

Fuck Water Jet in its old form. I wasn't a fan of having to use FB to get FoF.

First, instead of being arrogant, re-read your posts before you hit post.

Spread was last week's change.
25% is more then 24%
Play a mage.

I'm sorry but no. 25% is already live. Either through 5.1 at the last second or a hotfix, it's been live for awhile now.

Arcane

Arcane Blast mana cost has been increased to 1.66667% of base mana (was 1.5%).

Huh, why didn't they say anything about a "1% increase to AC"? Oh, probably because it was ALREADY LIVE. Please don't tell me I'm wrong when even Blizzard agrees, kthx.

I really hope, they buff frost pve wise, I don't wanna play Arcane, it's boring and pink.

24% Increase to damage (AND SCALING!) and -15% from not having the debuff. That comes out to 9%+ boost to Frostbolt alone. Quite a nice buff.

I thought invocation might finally be usable with Arcane now so we could get away from the rune of pus, but if passive mana regen is 50% for the 1 minute of increased spell power then doesn't this mean you will never get your mana back up after you clear stacks? Thus you would need to be evocating like every time you drop your stacks to get mana back up to make use of mastery.. as in like every 20 seconds if you're unlucky with AM procs? Jesus..

Um... This is a QoL improvement for all three speccs you know. It didn't say you don't regen the full 60% mana, and now if you don't have Invoker's Energy, you get normal, 100% mana regen. I can't see this as anything but a boost to Arcane (except for the 10% damage loss). You still had the 50% mana regen loss ALL THE TIME, rather than just when you had the buff. Now you get your mana back faster, and it has no cooldown.

...reduces its channeling time and duration by 50%.

Why does it say channeling time and duration?

That has me completely petrified for some reason... I feel they're going to nerf something, hard. Most likely the Invocation glyph (Even if they nerf it to 20% though, it'll still be very strong because of the no cooldown and half channeling)

Could someone please explain this? (my primary language isn't English, so I might be missing something)

It was changed from "Damage" to "Direct Damage",
but all of the relevant spells are direct damaging spells and not dots like LB.

It essentially means Pyroblast DoT doesn't benefit Ignite at all (it never did anyways, but they wanted that to be more clear for Pyroblast DoT). Since Pyroblast has both a Direct and DoT portion, they thought it was a bit misleading, and I'll actually agree, it kinda was.

Hmmm, so a 24% increase to frostbolt damage, but it's taken off the debuff (15%). So it's a 9% increase to frostbolt damage, which is probably a 2-3% increase in total damage. Less for AoE/Multi fights, more for ST fights (stone guards and blademaster respectively).

Although it may be a slightly bigger increase (like .02% more) because of the lack of buildup. You won't feel the need to get a frostbolt out there just to keep the debuff up (even though it will help, it's not as good now). So with buildup and maintenance taken out of the picture somewhat, it should increase our damage a little bit further.

Here's to hoping they get Water Jet out for 5.2, and make it give us 2 charges!

I'd say it's more than 9% because they're buffing the scaling. Even more because there is no buildup. Too lazy and tired to theorycraft it, but it's a VERY nice buff!

I'm curious what they do about Water Jet though.

Hey guys, what do you think - is Living Bomb still being spreaded with the new fireblast glyph in 5.2? If not, this would be another major nerf for Fire.

Nyeh. They gotta figure out some way to buff Fire without letting it get out of hand. More Fireball/Pyroblast damage maybe?




(Own thoughts without replying to a quote): Well, I for one am super excited about the Invocation change, despite it hitting our damage by 10%. I've always bitched about the duration being too long (you wouldn't BELIEVE how many H Elegon wipes I caused because of the stupid Cosmic Sparks! ), but I'm really worried about the "Channeling and Duration times have been cut by 50%" part. Why say both Duration AND Channeling?

Deep Freeze nerf was removed and only through a datamine. If that made it, think how poorly Frost would do in PvP...

Frostbolt buffed massively. I mean, massively. 9%+ increase to 3 stack Frostbolts, 14%+ increase to 2 stack, 19%+ increase to 1 stack, and your first Frostbolt (when the target has 0 stacks) gets a whopping 24%+ increase. I mean, god damn! Not only is that a ton more damage, but the scaling of Spellpower was increased by an additional 30%, meaning that the damage will actually rise higher than a simple 9-24%! So glad Frostbolt has some pretty good scaling now at 155%.

G Invis is actually going to be an option for me on some more fights besides just H Elegon now. That cooldown nerf (buff?) was just a nice fix to make it a viable option. Cold Snap still remains unviable for raiding because it's just worthless and even moreso now, and Blazing Speed... Triggering it on will. OH COOL, something we should have had from the start. It's still garbage though! Oh and still no one will take Ice Floes because it's crap compared to the other two superior spells. Scorch will still always be used for Arcane to give them any level of mobility, Fire still chooses between PoM for better Combustions and Scorch for mobility, and Frost will also continue to use Scorch for a mobile spell. Ice Floes really needs tweaking to make it a choice.

The last change that has me puzzled is Pet Freeze. On a "successful" Freeze? What on Azeroth does that mean? When it hits a target, or when it freezes a target? If the latter, you can be near guaranteed we'll be getting Water Jet, and hopefully in a better form than what it was going to be in 5.1's PTR.

Also to any Warlock people who come in here: GRATS on finally getting green flames!

[Imnick]

I thought invocation might finally be usable with Arcane now so we could get away from the rune of pus, but if passive mana regen is 50% for the 1 minute of increased spell power then doesn't this mean you will never get your mana back up after you clear stacks? Thus you would need to be evocating like every time you drop your stacks to get mana back up to make use of mastery.. as in like every 20 seconds if you're unlucky with AM procs? Jesus..

Invocation already does that on live

Fuck Water Jet in its old form. I wasn't a fan of having to use FB to get FoF.

That's how you get 90% of your FoF procs already though? :/

[brirrspliff]

Critical Mass was 1.5, then they nerfed it to 1.25, then buffed it to 1.3, and now they're nerfing it to 1.0.

that's 100% an error or wrong. because if you change a modifier to 1.0, it is not a modifier anymore. they could remove the "critical mass" talent completely then.

[jtmzac]

It says "Sucessful Freezes". I don't know if that means "you hit a target" or "you froze a target". Kinda curious tbh.

The last change that has me puzzled is Pet Freeze. On a "successful" Freeze? What on Azeroth does that mean? When it hits a target, or when it freezes a target? If the latter, you can be near guaranteed we'll be getting Water Jet, and hopefully in a better form than what it was going to be in 5.1's PTR.

I had assumed that due to the current wording that the target needs to be frozen to get the charges. If freeze wasn't a move and a debuff we wouldn't even need to ask the question. It's strange that there isn't water jet in the notes since it would help answer why the freeze change was made.

That has me completely petrified for some reason... I feel they're going to nerf something, hard. Most likely the Invocation glyph (Even if they nerf it to 20% though, it'll still be very strong because of the no cooldown and half channeling)

Well, I for one am super excited about the Invocation change, despite it hitting our damage by 10%. I've always bitched about the duration being too long (you wouldn't BELIEVE how many H Elegon wipes I caused because of the stupid Cosmic Sparks! ), but I'm really worried about the "Channeling and Duration times have been cut by 50%" part. Why say both Duration AND Channeling?

I've been thinking about the "duration and channeling" and my guess is that they said both because evocation/invocation has the channeling time when you cast it and more often forgotten is the buff you get while channeling it which might be what is being referred to as the "duration" in the notes. We may have just been overthinking it.

When you do the math the damage nerf is closer to 8% than 10% because of the half channeling time and increased duration so they'll have to make up the damage elsewhere to compensate.

[Polarthief]

that's 100% an error or wrong. because if you change a modifier to 1.0, it is not a modifier anymore. they could remove the "critical mass" talent completely then.

I saw it said "2.0" to "1.0". I then checked the actual tooltip and it was 1.5 to 1.3. People should be less lazy.

I had assumed that due to the current wording that the target needs to be frozen to get the charges. If freeze wasn't a move and a debuff we wouldn't even need to ask the question. It's strange that there isn't water jet in the notes since it would help answer why the freeze change was made.

I've been thinking about the "duration and channeling" and my guess is that they said both because evocation/invocation has the channeling time when you cast it and more often forgotten is the buff you get while channeling it which might be what is being referred to as the "duration" in the notes. We may have just been overthinking it.

When you do the math the damage nerf is closer to 8% than 10% because of the half channeling time and increased duration so they'll have to make up the damage elsewhere to compensate.

Still a little worried that they're straight up nerfing our FoF proccs.

8% damage? That's pretty bad. Granted, as Fire or Frost, we can now not-evocate for a bit longer, until we hit 35% mana or 60s, whichever comes first.

[jtmzac]

I saw it said "2.0" to "1.0". I then checked the actual tooltip and it was 1.5 to 1.3. People should be less lazy.

Still a little worried that they're straight up nerfing our FoF proccs.

8% damage? That's pretty bad. Granted, as Fire or Frost, we can now not-evocate for a bit longer, until we hit 35% mana or 60s, whichever comes first.

If water jet works like the 5.1 PTR we would be getting more FoF procs which still wouldn't make up for the 8% damage loss though. The 8% reduction seems like overkill for anyone using it with fire.

I hadn't thought about the mana changes because of the increased duration. We might get very close to oom during hero I know currently I can get down to about 30-35%. I hope we don't have to start using evocation for mana again.

I hope frost stays roughly where it is on damage compared to the other pve classes. I know mages have been strong but I had hoped by playing the middle spec I wouldn't have to worry about being overnerfed.

[Polarthief]

If water jet works like the 5.1 PTR we would be getting more FoF procs which still wouldn't make up for the 8% damage loss though. The 8% reduction seems like overkill for anyone using it with fire.

I hadn't thought about the mana changes because of the increased duration. We might get very close to oom during hero I know currently I can get down to about 30-35%. I hope we don't have to start using evocation for mana again.

I hope frost stays roughly where it is on damage compared to the other pve classes. I know mages have been strong but I had hoped by playing the middle spec I wouldn't have to worry about being overnerfed.

Meh, I'm not a big fan of 5.1 Water Jet. I hope they change it to be more useful somehow and not force us to only use it when we're gonna FB.

You forgot Mages regenerate Mana faster if they have more haste.

If we don't get a FoF booster, we'll be slightly lower because of the Invocation nerf. They really should just scrap that whole L90 tier and start fresh with some utility talents, and just buff base damage across the board to compensate not having to use their shitty ass mechanics.

[Alphamage]

- Frost: I believe that Blizzard wants to fix the high burst that Frost does in PVP and so, they want to push players go back to the Frostbolt+Ice lance combo with the Frostbolt buff. The PVE damage will be higher in my opinion in raid encounters.
- Arcane: The 6 charges camping play style was not something that Blizzard wanted. I believe that most Arcane Mages knew that a change was coming. It is not a nerf. It is just a change to the way that Arcane will be played. Maybe Invocation can be added in the Mage rotation now as with the haste it will be down to 2,5sec cast. So maybe a 6 charges/a couple moreAB maybe/clear with ArBar and then Invocate and repeat is what the rotation with Invocation will be like.
- Fire: I love Fire. All I see is some love with the +1 target spread of dots. The Invocation change will recover the -10% dmg as we will be able to have more uptime of the buff in my opinion. The Living bomb spread through Inferno Blast is not a nerf. You just need to miss 2 gcd only in Trash. In boss fights it is not a loss. I would love to see a buff in Living Bomb explosion damage though...

[Polarthief]

- Frost: I believe that Blizzard wants to fix the high burst that Frost does in PVP and so, they want to push players go back to the Frostbolt+Ice lance combo with the Frostbolt buff. The PVE damage will be higher in my opinion in raid encounters.

Provided Freeze still works on bosses or we get Water Jet, yes. Though, the Invocation nerf is in fact a nerf to overall damage.

- Arcane: The 6 charges camping play style was not something that Blizzard wanted. I believe that most Arcane Mages knew that a change was coming. It is not a nerf. It is just a change to the way that Arcane will be played. Maybe Invocation can be added in the Mage rotation now as with the haste it will be down to 2,5sec cast. So maybe a 6 charges/a couple moreAB maybe/clear with ArBar and then Invocate and repeat will be what the rotation with Invocation will be like.

Will be interesting to see Arcane with new Invo...

- Fire: I love Fire. All I see is some love with the +1 target spread of dots. The Invocation change will recover the -10% dmg as we will be able to have more uptime of the buff in my opinion. The Living bomb spread through Inferno Blast is not a nerf. You just need to miss 2 gcd only in Trash. In boss fights it is not a loss. I would love to see a buff in Living Bomb explosion damage though...

Uh... You completely missed the point with Fire. LB spread is indeed a nerf. Trash only? I guess you forgot Stone guards, H Feng, Gara'jal, Elegon, Will, Garalon, Wind Lord, Amber-Shaper, and Empress where cleave is a DPS increase. Having to use an additional global is a nerf. More uptime on Invoker's Energy will not make up for a 10% nerf, also, how much more uptime? We won't get a full 20s increase because our mana will be too low. I'm already hitting 40-45% as Frost after only 40 seconds, so after 60s, I'll be somewhere around 10-20%!

Now if they make Invocation give us 100% mana back from Evocate, then the duration increase would at least make logical sense. This is quite a heavy nerf (8% damage or so) in total, but I do like the increase in QoL at least.

Fire however is doomed to do garbage now. Even on Cleave fights, which is the only place it shined, the lack of LB spreading just ruins the specc even more. It's like they want us all to do Arcane and Frost.

[jtmzac]

Meh, I'm not a big fan of 5.1 Water Jet. I hope they change it to be more useful somehow and not force us to only use it when we're gonna FB.

You forgot Mages regenerate Mana faster if they have more haste.

If we don't get a FoF booster, we'll be slightly lower because of the Invocation nerf. They really should just scrap that whole L90 tier and start fresh with some utility talents, and just buff base damage across the board to compensate not having to use their shitty ass mechanics.

I'm not a fan of water jet either. Getting 2 FoF procs on single target is good but the mechanic seems rather awkwardly shoved into the rotation.

I didn't forget mages get more mana regen from haste :P I just wasn't sure it would make up for the changes.

We'll need roughly around 20% more FoF procs to make up the 6% damage from according to my quick math (assuming the frostbolt buff is 2% more overall damage and Ice lance is around 28% of your overall damage). The problem is more procs isn't always a good thing. We can only have 2 at once and there's already some situations where it's very hard to avoid going over and wasting a charge due to unpredicatable rng.

[Deleted]

Why oh why are they messing now with our cleave? It's all that Fire has currently. Just delete the class and be over with it.

[Polarthief]

Why oh why are they messing now with our cleave? It's all that Fire has currently. Just delete the class and be over with it.

The specc*

[Imnick]

Doesn't LB only have half the normal global cooldown? You spend as many globals spreading it manually (2 x 0.5) as you do using Inferno Blast (1 x 1)
It's just that doing it with IB did not require a mouseover macro.

I'm also pretty sure that Nether Tempest tops Living Bomb on Stone Guards, what with one target always taking reduced damage and standing far away.
People only use LB now as Fire for the convenience.

And this is all irrelevant anyway because Fire's cleave strength has (since MoP) always been in Ignite. Pyroblast and Combustion rather than a spell all three specs have access to...

[Deleted]

The specc*

Yeah my mistake. I just really hope LB spreading will be baked baseline into Inferno Blast. It's just one of those changes that ruin the QoL of the spec and hurts this dull class even more.

[Methusula]

Mage

Invocation now removes Evocation's cooldown and reduces its channeling time and duration by 50%. A completed Evocation now grants 15% increased damage (was 25%) for 1 minute (was 40 seconds) after an Evocation is completed. Passive mana regeneration is reduced by 50% only while Invoker's Energy is active.
Greater invisibility now has a 90 second cooldown (was 2.5 minutes).
Frostbolt cast by Mirror Images now deals 50% more damage.
Improved Counterspell has been removed.
Glyph of Fire Blast has been replaced with Glyph of Inferno Blast. Glyph of Inferno Blast causes damage over time effects spread by Inferno Blast to spread to 1 additional target.
Blazing Speed can now be triggered at will.
Cold Snap now heals the Mage for 15% of maximum health when used (was 30%).
Ice Floes now has a 45 second cooldown (was 1 minute).
Scorch now costs 3.5% of base mana (was 0.1%).
Arcane
Arcane Blast's mana cost has been increased to 1.66667% of base mana (was 1.5%).
Frost
Frostbolt now deals 24% more damage, but its debuff no longer increases subsequent Frostbolt damage.
Water Elemental
Freeze no longer does damage, and only provides Fingers of Frost on a successful freeze.

Ouch. What are we supposed to do in pvp again?

Edit: People worrying about our mana with a longer Invocation duration; we still have mana gems. Remember those? I do. They will come in handy again. With the increase in item level, haste will go up and our regen will be better. Mana will still be a non issue for anyone who isn't Arcane. These patch notes are also nowhere near complete, even as an early draft. Rune of Power and Incanter's Ward are already an afterthought with the changes to Invocation and I doubt they will let that stand. They nerfed Rune of Power's mana return. I'm guessing a QoL adjustment is due and an all around rework of Incanter's ward may be in the works as well.

[Deleted]

The new invocation is a nerf for frost and fire hence the -10% SP change even if it has a reduced cast time. It's not a 10% nerf but i'd give it a 5-8% overall considering both changes combined. It's less of a nerf to frost which is receiveing the frostbolt buff (again its not a straight 24% buff since you still need to cast 3 consecutive bolts for applying the stacks to make lance and FFB hit harder) while fire is just getting shit on till it's utterly useless.

Doesn't LB only have half the normal global cooldown? You spend as many globals spreading it manually (2 x 0.5) as you do using Inferno Blast (1 x 1)

LB has a 1 sec GCD while the default GCD is 1,5 sec.

Arcane on the other hand.. people still don't realize that the 25% AB damage and 75% mana cost increase are already in effect since 5.1 (read official patch notes) so it is generally getting a nerf; 100% to 75% mana reg RoP and 3,5% mana cost for Scorch which deducts our 6 stacks camping/weaving.

[Polarthief]

Doesn't LB only have half the normal global cooldown?

I'm also pretty sure that Nether Tempest tops Living Bomb on Stone Guards, what with one target always taking reduced damage and standing far away.
People only use LB now as Fire for the convenience.

And this is all irrelevant anyway because Fire's cleave strength has (since MoP) always been in Ignite. Pyroblast and Combustion rather than a spell all three specs have access to...

No, it has a .5s decrease, but GCD caps at 1, so that bonus is decreased with more haste. Worst case scenario with a 1.5s gcd, you would do LB x1 and IB, resulting in 2.5s gcd, or 3x LB which would be 3.0s gcd. It's still a nerf no matter how you look at it.

The new invocation is a nerf for frost and fire hence the -10% SP change even if it has a reduced cast time. It's not a 10% nerf but i'd give it a 5-8% overall considering both changes combined. It's less of a nerf to frost which is receiveing the frostbolt buff (again its not a straight 24% buff since you still need to cast 3 consecutive bolts for applying the stacks to make lance and FFB hit harder) while fire is just getting shit on till it's utterly useless.


LB has a 1 sec GCD while the default GCD is 1,5 sec.

Arcane on the other hand.. people still don't realize that the 25% AB damage and 75% mana cost increase are already in effect since 5.1 (read official patch notes) so it is generally getting a nerf; 100% to 75% mana reg RoP and 3,5% mana cost for Scorch which deducts our 6 stacks camping/weaving.

Fire is even more shit than before, Frost is still getting an overall nerf because a 9%+ increase to overall Frostbolt is actually like a 2-5% damage increase (depends on RNG/how good you are at Frost). It's still a nerf because of Invo, and they haven't yet fixed IW when GC said it's an issue. These patch notes are FAR from done for Mages. (also, I like their now second attempt at balancing the shitty Blazing Speed. THIS WON'T FIX A DAMN THING)

[Menphis]

I was really hoping they'd "fix" fire in 5.2 after what they've did to it right after 5.1 hit.
Reverting CM to 1.3 doesn't help much.
Maybe new gear in 5.2 will some what help fire spec come back to life, who knows.

But looking at the PTR notes, I don't see Blizzard putting effort on trying to make fire decent again.

Might as well get rid of the fire spec like some one said and replace it with a mage version of Afflicition /sarcasm

[Polarthief]

Reverting CM to 1.3 doesn't help much.

Why do people not read hotfixes? THIS WAS HOTFIXED WEEKS AGO -_-

[jtmzac]

Why do people not read hotfixes? THIS WAS HOTFIXED WEEKS AGO -_-

Not everyone checks the wow news and the forums all day everyday sadly