[Mage] 5.2 PTR Discussion (based on Feb 19 notes)

[Shangalar]

Now that I think about it, wouldn't G Invis actually make you take, literally, 0 damage?

Ice Blocking makes them ignore you (not strike for 0 damage; they literally will lose interest in you if you Ice Block because of the debuff). I'd assume G Invis would too because you're not there.

It would depend on what moment you activate it. If they already start running towards you then they finish the ability. Something like that. I know that the first time they tried to strike me I got hit through invis. Next time I blocked so nothing happened and again the time after that I went invis and nothing happened.

[DeathDefier]

Excuse me for being ignorant as I haven't done Arena in years, but how would you know what your opponents are until it's too late to swap?

The game tells you the comp as you load in now.

[Deleted]

Regardless if it's a DPS gain in SOME bosses (and a very VERY small one at that), I still refuse to take it because it makes him huge. It's too annoying to use.

If only they made a Minor glyph to remove that part...

I never said it was a huge dps increase. if it's a gain of 10 water-bolt on heavy movement fight, it's the great maximum.
For the size, I would prefer a cute Water spirit, or even a Water Elem of the size of an Imp or a Gnome, not bigger than a Tauren.

[Swizzle]

The game tells you the comp as you load in now.

Which is actually an amazingly good feature as it allows you to change your glyphs and talents for free to be able to cope with whatever you're up against. So much more tactical than just goin' in blind and hoping a Hunter or Lock pet bugs out and you spot them.

[jtmzac]

I never said it was a huge dps increase. if it's a gain of 10 water-bolt on heavy movement fight, it's the great maximum.
For the size, I would prefer a cute Water spirit, or even a Water Elem of the size of an Imp or a Gnome, not bigger than a Tauren.

Its quite a significant increase unless you're really going to all the trouble to move your elemental around. Performing an accurate "move to" while casting frostbolt is not that easy.

Try doing sha without the glyph as its probably the best example this tier. I realise with the freeze change its less important but waterbolt is still a lot of our dps as frost. On a patchwerk fight my elemental did 14% of my overall damage (you can take away a bit for freeze but its still a lot).

Wether the size is a problem or not is very subjective. I only ever notice it when there's pathing issues like elegon's platform and it stands on top of you and even then it doesn't bother me at all.

[Polarthief]

The game tells you the comp as you load in now.

Really? Wow, that's pretty nice. Allows you to make a strategy during that boring ass pre-game time

Granted, if you don't change talents around, FG still remains as is: Garbage, unless you preemptively use it.

[zomgDPS]

Which is actually an amazingly good feature as it allows you to change your glyphs and talents for free to be able to cope with whatever you're up against. So much more tactical than just goin' in blind and hoping a Hunter or Lock pet bugs out and you spot them.

Though at the same time, it is schizophrenic behavior from the devs.

On one hand, they say that they don't want to encourage the "swap out talents based on what boss you are on/arena team you are against" and they say that they want "every talent to stand on its own two feet".
Yet on the other hand, they not only make it completely painless, but actually design and demand talents be used in a fashion that is the complete contrary to the aforementioned design goal.


What is stopping them just blatantly labeling a talent "the PvP talent" and another "the PvE talent"? What is stopping them extending this concept to specs themselves?

I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. And it is partly due to this dislike that I think flameglow is a failure of design.

[Polarthief]

Though at the same time, it is schizophrenic behavior from the devs.

On one hand, they say that they don't want to encourage the "swap out talents based on what boss you are on/arena team you are against" and they say that they want "every talent to stand on its own two feet".
Yet on the other hand, they not only make it completely painless, but actually design and demand talents be used in a fashion that is the complete contrary to the aforementioned design goal.


What is stopping them just blatantly labeling a talent "the PvP talent" and another "the PvE talent"? What is stopping them extending this concept to specs themselves?

I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. And it is partly due to this dislike that I think flameglow is a failure of design.

Designers: "We don't want you to do X"
*Later*
Designers: "We still don't want you to do X, but we're going to give you Y which will HIGHLY ENCOURAGE you to do X"

Great design philosophy, huh?

[Swizzle]

Though at the same time, it is schizophrenic behavior from the devs.

On one hand, they say that they don't want to encourage the "swap out talents based on what boss you are on/arena team you are against" and they say that they want "every talent to stand on its own two feet".
Yet on the other hand, they not only make it completely painless, but actually design and demand talents be used in a fashion that is the complete contrary to the aforementioned design goal.


What is stopping them just blatantly labeling a talent "the PvP talent" and another "the PvE talent"? What is stopping them extending this concept to specs themselves?

I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. And it is partly due to this dislike that I think flameglow is a failure of design.

Well, if I'm doing 2v2 with a healer and going against a healer team, I'll swap Frost Bomb for Nether Tempest...and I think that's it. That might change for FlGlo next patch, but I'm not sure, it would depend on melee vs. caster cleave (FloGlo seems to be better against caster comps anyway). It's not bad, but I think it lets them not have to label things for PvE and PvP if you can freely switch in arena.

[Taiknee]

You don't take Flameglow for a 1v1 duel against a sub rogue. Actually you don't take Flameglow for a 1v1 duel against anyone. Cooking up the math and putting it into this situation and then exclaiming "this is bad, buff plox" makes no sense.

What you could do, is take Flameglow for a 3v3 game against say a shadowplay comp. Say the match lasts 5 minutes, have alook at all the dot damage you've taken during that time, and do some math to see if its still bad. Factor in your IB getting dispelled atleast 1 out of every 2 casts, and perhaps it's not looking so shabby anymore. A well timed IB right before someone bursts you may still be better, but the odds of it being dispelled are high (if the opposing team plays well, they will clean you of all your magic buffs right before bursting you anyway). Against anything with a shaman on the team Flameglow might turn out to be damn good. Those bastards will purge you clean constantly, and it doesn't even help covering your shield with Slow Fall.

I think it looks like a situationally good talent. Perhaps not so much for PvE as for PvP, but then we have IB and TS to pick up if Flameglow will be sub par. If Flameglow is buffed too much, it'll just turn into a Shadow Priest -15% damage taken thing, and will be mandatory for all raiding. I'm fairly certain that's not what they're looking to do.

You can think what you want. Thankfully, I have confidence in my "cooked up" math.

[Deleted]

Well, if I'm doing 2v2 with a healer and going against a healer team, I'll swap Frost Bomb for Nether Tempest...and I think that's it. That might change for FlGlo next patch, but I'm not sure, it would depend on melee vs. caster cleave (FloGlo seems to be better against caster comps anyway). It's not bad, but I think it lets them not have to label things for PvE and PvP if you can freely switch in arena.

You'll certainly swap for glyph of armor on melee sometimes too. I see Ziqo swapping glyphs almost everytime he gets into an arena, talent swapping is rare though.

[Swizzle]

You'll certainly swap for glyph of armor on melee sometimes too. I see Ziqo swapping glyphs almost everytime he gets into an arena, talent swapping is rare though.

Probably not so much after the patch hits since Glyph of DF won't be so mandatory anymore. The talent swap is only for 2s against annoying dispel teams, but rarely used in 3s. Ultimately, how it works in arena is very good and fluid, dunno how it applies to the rest of the game though.

[Polarthief]

Mage
- While we like mages hard casting spells more often in PvP, we agree with the consensus that we overdid the buff to Frostbolt. We are going to revert one of the earlier changes and have it once again increase its damage by its own debuff. Base damage has been reduced to compensate, but should not change for the fully stacked case.

Old patch note: Frostbolt deals 52% more damage, but its debuff no longer increases subsequent Frostbolt damage.

New patch note: Frostbolt now deals 32% more damage.

We just can't fucking win, can we?

They could have easily scaled down PvP Power or something, but no. Instead, we're back to the stupid 3 stack thing for Frostbolt once more >_>;

Also, they haven't bothered to touch our poor PvE scaling issues, as if they really and truly don't want Frost to ever be competitive in PvE.

Makes me wonder if they just gave us old PvE Deep Freeze again that Mastery would be worth it a bit more and our DPS would definitely be competitive. Plus, it doesn't even TOUCH PvP, so why not?

Edit: Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't 32+15 = 47, and not 52, or is the 15 and 32 multiplicative? (in which case, it's STILL a nerf as it comes out to be 51.8%... What the fuck? You'd think it'd be STRONGER since we need to 3 stack it once more, not WEAKER)



---------- Post added 2013-02-21 at 05:49 PM ----------

You can think what you want. Thankfully, I have confidence in my "cooked up" math.

Someone else please tell me they read "cooked up math" as "cooked up meth"...

>.>

<.<

I watch too much Breaking Bad...

[Swizzle]

Mage
- While we like mages hard casting spells more often in PvP, we agree with the consensus that we overdid the buff to Frostbolt. We are going to revert one of the earlier changes and have it once again increase its damage by its own debuff. Base damage has been reduced to compensate, but should not change for the fully stacked case.

Old patch note: Frostbolt deals 52% more damage, but its debuff no longer increases subsequent Frostbolt damage.

New patch note: Frostbolt now deals 32% more damage.

We just can't fucking win, can we?

They could have easily scaled down PvP Power or something, but no. Instead, we're back to the stupid 3 stack thing for Frostbolt once more >_>;

Also, they haven't bothered to touch our poor PvE scaling issues, as if they really and truly don't want Frost to ever be competitive in PvE.

Makes me wonder if they just gave us old PvE Deep Freeze again that Mastery would be worth it a bit more and our DPS would definitely be competitive. Plus, it doesn't even TOUCH PvP, so why not?

You can't touch PvP Power for an individual spell...so they can't take that route. Isn't the total damage the same though? The only part of PvE it affects I can see is target switching, so correct me if I'm wrong.

[Polarthief]

You can't touch PvP Power for an individual spell...so they can't take that route. Isn't the total damage the same though? The only part of PvE it affects I can see is target switching, so correct me if I'm wrong.

Huge nerf if we need to swap targets, and even after you get 3 stacks, it's still a .2% nerf, but you can't forget the first 3 Frostbolts will be significantly weaker though. It's still a nerf to PvE when it shouldn't be. While on some bosses, this won't be that big of a deal, others where your debuff falls off, it's quite a significance.

If they changed it to 35% increase, it'd come out to 55.25% damage (+3.25%)
34% increase: 54.1% (+2.1%)
33% increase: 52.95% (+0.95%)

Either way, they should at least increase it to 33% at the very least to make up for the huge nerf to target switching and needing to stack the debuffs back up.

Getting tired of PvP reasons keeping Frost from being competitive, ever.

[Swizzle]

Frost's mechanics are ultimately what are keeping it back, not PvP. It's really hard to have the spec revolve around a status a boss can never have while still being somewhat engaging and powerful.

[Polarthief]

Frost's mechanics are ultimately what are keeping it back, not PvP. It's really hard to have the spec revolve around a status a boss can never have while still being somewhat engaging and powerful.

If only they could change it to "chilled" instead of "Frozen" damage.

Or allow us to freeze bosses, but freezing a boss doesn't root them; just a status effect to buff our spells.

Also, on an unrelated note, I just found out that Fireball is significantly weaker than Frostbolt. Really curious how that's supposed to work .-.;

[Joshythemage]

Welcome back Frost ramp up, we've REALLY missed you... Isn't it just LOVELY to be useless on heavy target switching fights?! Seriously it's obvious Blizzard has no freaking idea what they're doing anymore, I don't know who they have working on mage balance (besides Ghostcrawler at least) but I think they need to fire them all because this entire expansion has just been an annoying roller coaster ride of changes that most of the time make completely no sense at all.

[Polarthief]

Welcome back Frost ramp up, we've REALLY missed you... Isn't it just LOVELY to be useless on heavy target switching fights?! Seriously it's obvious Blizzard has no freaking idea what they're doing anymore, I don't know who they have working on mage balance (besides Ghostcrawler at least) but I think they need to fire them all because this entire expansion has just been an annoying roller coaster ride of changes that most of the time make completely no sense at all.

Which is what we've been saying since Beta when they unveiled RoP and Invo. *sighs*

Our pleas fall on deaf ears.

Another thing I love is how they can adjust Frost Bomb to do less damage on players... What's stopping them from keeping Frostbolt at +52% and reducing it by 20% on players? Why do they have to completely fuck over PvE players with debuff stacking because they're too lazy to stop and think "Hmmm, maybe we could do what we did to Frost Bomb..."?

But no, go on ahead, Blizzard. Feel free to make our Mage lives more annoying and difficult. You've done more than enough of that this expansion, but please, feel free to continue -_-;

[jtmzac]

Getting tired of PvP reasons keeping Frost from being competitive, ever.

^My thoughts exactly.

I would prefer Ice Lance to do full damage without stacks but that would probably just cause even more pvp problems.