Swizzle's Crazy Mage Discussiorama!!

[KalarMage]

My idea:

Scrap the current Lvl 90 talents and increase our base damage by X% to compensate.

Replace the current talents with similar ideas to the following:

Ice Shield (or Dalaran Dome as mentioned earlier): 2 or 3min cd. Reduces damage taken by x% over X seconds while players remain in the "dome"

Mana Portal: Mage casts a portal to the Nether, allowing loose mana to seep through and be absorbed by fellow party/raid members. (have it function similarly to mana tide and/or lightwell)

Wild Fire: (similar to a warrior's crit banner) Nearby party/raid members receive x% extra crit rating for X seconds. (Include some kind of flame graphic on each affected raid member)

These are mostly just brainstorms and I'm sure they could be improved upon.

[usiris]

I'm more of a follower than a leader in theorycrafting but i'll give my ideas...

I'm very bias toward Fire and can I feel I can only comment on it.


Fire used to have a very dot(ish) feel to it in Wrath and Cata; the point I felt was to build dots on the target and pop Combustion. Now its just build ignite. This makes for a very RNG feel if you dont get a good streak at the start of your pull or whenever you have it up; and theres always that great feeling after you hit combustion then 10 sec latter you see you've built a 30-35k ignite where yours was only 20-25k.

I'd like to see us have more dot type things. One from fireball, one from pyroblast, one from scorch, living bomb and maybe ignite. Put more emphasis on having the non ignite dots on the target at all times vs just ignite.

Have combustion be a longer lasting dot, like 1 min, but have the damage it deals equal to the dots on the target(from above).

I like the feeling of building up combustion, but just not having it be so random. Like getting a 200k burst one pull and fighting for 100k the next.

[Swizzle]

Moving toward 6.0, I don't know how many talent tiers we will have going forward, so keep that in mind when discussing them.

In order to properly remove the current T6 talents, I feel it would be best to rework parts of their passives into the defensive tier of talents. Here's what I mean.


In addition to its current effect, Temporal Shield now restores mana equal to 20% of the damage absorbed and increases Spellpower by 15% after it expires or is dispelled.


In addition to its current effect, Flameglow now passively increases mana regeneration by 60% and increases Spellpower by 50% of the damage absorbed up to a maximum of 20% of your Intellect.


In addition to its current effect, when Ice Barrier is completely absorbed or dispelled, you are energized, returning 15% of your maximum mana. Your Spellpower is passively increased by 10%.

---------- Post added 2013-04-04 at 08:55 PM ----------

As for my replacements for the current tier, here are my ideas.

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Chronal Displacer
  5% base mana
  45 yard range
  Places a chrono marker on a target, causing your Arcane Blast, Fireball, and Frostbolt to let you slip through time. Each successful cast against the marked target increases your spell haste by 2% and all magic damage taken by the target by 1%, stacking up to 5 times. Instant cast. Lasts 1 minute. 30 second cooldown.

• Seething Plasma
  5% base mana
  Ignite a wildfire within yourself increasing Critical strike rate by 20% and Spellpower by 6%. The flame burns brightly, increasing the Critical strike rate of friendly targets within 20 yards of you by 10% and increasing all damage done by 3%. 1 second cast. Lasts 30 seconds. 2 minute cooldown.

• Eternal Glacier
  5% base mana
  The Mage summons the powers of deepest winter, removing all crowd control effects and granting immunity from such effects for 2 seconds. During the duration, the Mage gains 25% Mastery and increases all damage done by 3%. Friendly targets within 20 yards of the Mage have their Mastery increased by 10% and Spell haste rating increased by 5%. Instant cast. Lasts 20 seconds. 2.5 minute cooldown.

[Methusula]

Moving toward 6.0, I don't know how many talent tiers we will have going forward, so keep that in mind when discussing them.

In order to properly remove the current T6 talents, I feel it would be best to rework parts of their passives into the defensive tier of talents. Here's what I mean.


In addition to its current effect, Temporal Shield now restores mana equal to 20% of the damage absorbed and increases Spellpower by 15% after it expires or is dispelled.


In addition to its current effect, Flameglow now passively increases mana regeneration by 60% and increases Spellpower by 50% of the damage absorbed up to a maximum of 20% of your Intellect.


In addition to its current effect, when Ice Barrier is completely absorbed or dispelled, you are energized, returning 15% of your maximum mana. Your Spellpower is passively increased by 10%.

---------- Post added 2013-04-04 at 08:55 PM ----------

As for my replacements for the current tier, here are my ideas.

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Chronal Displacer
  5% base mana
  45 yard range
  Places a chrono marker on a target, causing your Arcane Blast, Fireball, and Frostbolt to let you slip through time. Each successful cast against the marked target increases your spell haste by 2% and all magic damage taken by the target by 1%, stacking up to 5 times. Instant cast. Lasts 1 minute. 30 second cooldown.

• Seething Plasma
  5% base mana
  Ignite a wildfire within yourself increasing Critical strike rate by 20% and Spellpower by 6%. The flame burns brightly, increasing the Critical strike rate of friendly targets within 20 yards of you by 10% and increasing all damage done by 3%. 1 second cast. Lasts 30 seconds. 2 minute cooldown.

• Eternal Glacier
  5% base mana
  The Mage summons the powers of deepest winter, removing all crowd control effects and granting immunity from such effects for 2 seconds. During the duration, the Mage gains 25% Mastery and increases all damage done by 3%. Friendly targets within 20 yards of the Mage have their Mastery increased by 10% and Spell haste rating increased by 5%. Instant cast. Lasts 20 seconds. 2.5 minute cooldown.

Interesting concept on the replacement talents, but it looks like the defensive talents are just worse versions of the t90 we have now. Still maintenance buffs, and they already do too much as it is. Add the shield on top of mana return and spell damage boost and it's a clusterfrack.

[Swizzle]

Actually I agree. I'd scrap the whole mana return thing and just increase our passive mana regen to say...165% of what it is now? I was experimenting with a way to lose the talents but not lose their effects. I think keeping the increased damage on the talent would give them more functionality in PvE and PvP and make them somewhat more rewarding since we have so few rewarding tools in our kit already.

However, I wouldn't balance us around those bonuses, so I'd probably lower the spellpower bonuses by half to make it a fair bonus without being mandatory.

Actually screw it. No increased mana regen, Evocation on a 30 second CD for all specs, 3 second channel, restores 10% mana upon activation and another 10% per second for a grand total of 40% returned after 3 seconds.

[Jarion]

New Fire Passive

Every cast of Fireball, Frostfire Bolt and Pyroblast that does not crit, increases the crit chance of your next Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Pyroblast by (100-player crit level)/4. This buff stacks until consumed by a Critical spell cast from Fireball, Frostfire Bolt or Pyroblast.

The idea here is to smooth out the RNG of crits while preventing fire mages from reaching crits levels that ensure a crit every other cast. This basically ensures the longest one can go without a crit is 4 casts (if Blizzard prefers a differ divisor, its a simple tweak). It also retains value to having crit as a stat on your gear.

If a mage has 0% crit, then every cast adds 25% to buff.
At 10%, then its 22.5%.
At 20% then its 20%.
At 30% then its 17.5%.
At 40% then its 15%.
etc...

With those numbers Mages would be guaranteed to crit with every forth cast no matter what their crit percentage was at. That's way too good.

[Elegiac]

Actually I agree. I'd scrap the whole mana return thing and just increase our passive mana regen to say...165% of what it is now? I was experimenting with a way to lose the talents but not lose their effects. I think keeping the increased damage on the talent would give them more functionality in PvE and PvP and make them somewhat more rewarding since we have so few rewarding tools in our kit already.

However, I wouldn't balance us around those bonuses, so I'd probably lower the spellpower bonuses by half to make it a fair bonus without being mandatory.

Actually screw it. No increased mana regen, Evocation on a 30 second CD for all specs, 3 second channel, restores 10% mana upon activation and another 10% per second for a grand total of 40% returned after 3 seconds.

If the Level 90 talents are going to be gotten rid of, it's assumed that their damage would be rolled into our base damage to compensate. There is no need to tie the Incanter's Ward functionality into Temporal Shield and the like. Even Evocation can be safely removed for Fire and Frost since mana is irrelevant to those specs.

The problem with the replacement talents that you mentioned is that they are stat-specific, meaning there becomes a clear choice depending on the stat weighting of a particular spec (why would Arcane or Frost ever want Seething Plasma, for instance?). As I said earlier, they should offer three modes of damage increase; burst, sustained, and execute.

[Jarion]

As I said earlier, they should offer three modes of damage increase; burst, sustained, and execute.

I like this. Or instead of execute, maybe AOE.

[Elegiac]

I like this. Or instead of execute, maybe AOE.

No, AoE improvement should be a tier in of itself. Perhaps replacing the Ring of Frost tier.

[jtmzac]

I really think all casters should get mana removed and arcane could either keep mana or have something similar with its own name. The only problem with mages I can see with removing mana is spellsteal in pvp but you could just give it a cooldown or a charge system.

I really hope we'll get more talent tiers as the 6 we have now just isn't enough. It just feels boring and they're just too far apart when you're levelling.

[Jarion]

Many Talents
When activated all the mage's spells do an additional x% of damage from another school.
lasts 10 seconds, 1 minute cooldown

Weapon of Choice
When active applies a buff that causes spells to apply the Weapon of Choice debuff that increases the damage done by that spell's school by x%. Stacks to 10. Only one weapon of choice debuff can be active at a time per mage. Any movement cancels the buff.
20 second cooldown, Debuff lasts 5 seconds

A Mind for Numbers
When the mage casts a spell that damages three or more targets the next channeled spell does double damage.
Last 6 seconds, 12 second cooldown

[Hasted]

For Fire I personally see a fairly simple overhaul. Fire scales all to well with crit and is consequently hard to balance because of mechanics such as Ignite and Combustion that play so well off of good strings of RNG. The fact that the spec is so reliant on RNG is one of its largest issues in that it makes the spec too weak with poor RNG and too strong with it. To alleviate the RNG swings I propose a change to Ignite, Combustion, as well as Mastery.

In my opinion Ignite is no longer an interesting mechanic now that it is something that procs off of every Fireball and Pyroblast; aside from its interaction with Combustion it is little more than a passive damage increase.

Combustion is both one of the most rewarding and frustrating mechanics of Fire Mages at the moment. Currently it relies heavily on a string of crits to live up to its potential, and consequently when these crits don't happen the damage of a Fire Mage suffers greatly. This is further compounded by the fact that the available windows in which you might stack a strong ignite are at times too short; at which point you can either force your Combustion early and lose out on damage or save it and risk losing an entire Combustion depending on the duration and flow of the fight.

Finally we have the Fire Mastery, a needless mechanic. Mastery has never been, and likely will never be a strong stat for Fire in its current state. As it stands Ignite is the only thing affected by Mastery and Ignite's damage is fairly low without it; accounting for 10-15% overall damage on average. In its current state its interaction is neither strong nor rewarding to the extent that Haste is the next best stat for Fire despite the existence of Combustion.

Proposed Changes:

Ignite/Combustion:

Ignite
5% Base Mana
Instant Cast
Every 10 seconds the Mage builds 1 charge of Ignite up to a maximum of 2 charges.
Ignite deals X damage over 15 seconds. This effect stacks up to 12 times.
Upon reaching 12 stacks of Ignite the target Combusts dealing Y Fire damage. Combustion always crits.


Mastery: Increases the critical strike damage of Mage abilities by X%



Reasoning:

This Ignite model keeps with the theme of Fire having some DoT components and also brings back that old feel of Ignite stacking. The charges are in place to prevent players from being punished too harshly for not using the ability immediately as it comes off cooldown. The actual timers are mainly placeholders. I chose 12 stacks because the fastest this could be theoretically accomplished would be 2 minutes. This is enough time that it would still stick with the current concept of Combustion. It is also a long enough time that it would present few balance issues in PVP for the fact that it would take a considerable amount of time to build up to a point that would make it too bursty.

For Combustion this model stays true to the current in that it deals a lot of damage. It needs to be enough damage that it feels rewarding to build up to that point, rather than a chore. To that extent the damage of the Combustion component itself doesn't have to be entirely front loaded. I could see it also being a DoT effect keeping with the current theme, but I feel like building up a DoT to proc a stronger DoT is kind of awkward. With the Combustion DoT setup the 100% crit chance would have to be removed, however I don't see that as being a big issue for a DoT.

The Mastery change seems to be the best logical conclusion from my perspective. Fire is geared towards crit, to the extent that a large number of its abilities revolve around critting. This just acts to make crits more rewarding as gear scales. As far as stat priority the only foreseeable change would be that Haste would lose some value and Mastery would gain some. This would likely shift Mastery into second place, however I'm not sure how Haste would pan out with the new iteration of the Ignite DoT.

[Jarion]

No, AoE improvement should be a tier in of itself. Perhaps replacing the Ring of Frost tier.

Interesting, but as messed up as our AOE currently is, can you see them coming up with three viable talents that apply to all specs?

[Deleted]

For Arcane I feel there is (still) barely any management of mana involved, it all feels like playing reactively to the amount of mana you have. It has to be like hunter's focus if entire idea is supposed to work, with instant spell to dump excess mana, SHORT casted spell that gives SMALL amount of mana, big nuke, small nuke, some procs. Oh and I would like to have Arcane Blast with an animation of a big instant beam/laser/whatsoever.

But to be honest, I would rather have entire idea of mana management scrapped.

[Swizzle]

If the Level 90 talents are going to be gotten rid of, it's assumed that their damage would be rolled into our base damage to compensate. There is no need to tie the Incanter's Ward functionality into Temporal Shield and the like. Even Evocation can be safely removed for Fire and Frost since mana is irrelevant to those specs.

The problem with the replacement talents that you mentioned is that they are stat-specific, meaning there becomes a clear choice depending on the stat weighting of a particular spec (why would Arcane or Frost ever want Seething Plasma, for instance?). As I said earlier, they should offer three modes of damage increase; burst, sustained, and execute.

That's kinda what I did, but I kept the stats provided as the ones iconically associated with the specs, aka Arcane grants Haste, Fire grants Crit, and Frost grants Mastery. In any case, as of right now, Frost and Arcane might not take Seething Plasma, however, who knows what it will be like in 6.0? Further, that one was given the particular burst damage to the raid, making it an interesting choice if there was ever a SoDW like encounter again. I tried to make each interesting for something while still giving spec identity. I'm also planning for a whole new tier of talents to be introduced as well. Rough ideas though, and a way to bring some form of raid utility that is directly tied to DPS, something we should bring.

---------- Post added 2013-04-04 at 11:50 PM ----------

Mastery: Increases the critical strike damage of Mage abilities by X%

Poo...you stole my idea from Cataclysm.

[Jarion]

snip

I like your reworking of ignite and combustion.

[Methusula]

For Fire I personally see a fairly simple overhaul. Fire scales all to well with crit and is consequently hard to balance because of mechanics such as Ignite and Combustion that play so well off of good strings of RNG. The fact that the spec is so reliant on RNG is one of its largest issues in that it makes the spec too weak with poor RNG and too strong with it. To alleviate the RNG swings I propose a change to Ignite, Combustion, as well as Mastery.

In my opinion Ignite is no longer an interesting mechanic now that it is something that procs off of every Fireball and Pyroblast; aside from its interaction with Combustion it is little more than a passive damage increase.

Combustion is both one of the most rewarding and frustrating mechanics of Fire Mages at the moment. Currently it relies heavily on a string of crits to live up to its potential, and consequently when these crits don't happen the damage of a Fire Mage suffers greatly. This is further compounded by the fact that the available windows in which you might stack a strong ignite are at times too short; at which point you can either force your Combustion early and lose out on damage or save it and risk losing an entire Combustion depending on the duration and flow of the fight.

Finally we have the Fire Mastery, a needless mechanic. Mastery has never been, and likely will never be a strong stat for Fire in its current state. As it stands Ignite is the only thing affected by Mastery and Ignite's damage is fairly low without it; accounting for 10-15% overall damage on average. In its current state its interaction is neither strong nor rewarding to the extent that Haste is the next best stat for Fire despite the existence of Combustion.

Proposed Changes:

Ignite/Combustion:

Ignite
5% Base Mana
Instant Cast
Every 10 seconds the Mage builds 1 charge of Ignite up to a maximum of 2 charges.
Ignite deals X damage over 15 seconds. This effect stacks up to 12 times.
Upon reaching 12 stacks of Ignite the target Combusts dealing Y Fire damage. Combustion always crits.


Mastery: Increases the critical strike damage of Mage abilities by X%



Reasoning:

This Ignite model keeps with the theme of Fire having some DoT components and also brings back that old feel of Ignite stacking. The charges are in place to prevent players from being punished too harshly for not using the ability immediately as it comes off cooldown. The actual timers are mainly placeholders. I chose 12 stacks because the fastest this could be theoretically accomplished would be 2 minutes. This is enough time that it would still stick with the current concept of Combustion. It is also a long enough time that it would present few balance issues in PVP for the fact that it would take a considerable amount of time to build up to a point that would make it too bursty.

For Combustion this model stays true to the current in that it deals a lot of damage. It needs to be enough damage that it feels rewarding to build up to that point, rather than a chore. To that extent the damage of the Combustion component itself doesn't have to be entirely front loaded. I could see it also being a DoT effect keeping with the current theme, but I feel like building up a DoT to proc a stronger DoT is kind of awkward. With the Combustion DoT setup the 100% crit chance would have to be removed, however I don't see that as being a big issue for a DoT.

The Mastery change seems to be the best logical conclusion from my perspective. Fire is geared towards crit, to the extent that a large number of its abilities revolve around critting. This just acts to make crits more rewarding as gear scales. As far as stat priority the only foreseeable change would be that Haste would lose some value and Mastery would gain some. This would likely shift Mastery into second place, however I'm not sure how Haste would pan out with the new iteration of the Ignite DoT.

I love this, especially the bolded part.

---------- Post added 2013-04-04 at 05:55 PM ----------

Poo...you stole my idea from Cataclysm.

Oh snap, you're right. I recall being a huge fan of the idea then too. Not sure what the issue is. Locks get ridiculous crit damage modifiers.

[Hasted]

Honestly when they first announced Mastery I thought that's what they would do with Fire for sure. Not sure why they went with the current design.

[Jarion]

Lack of clear vision. Fire has been muddled back and forth between the AOE class, the dot class, the crit class. When mastery arrived on the scene the dot thing was the focus, but though the spec's focus has clearly changed since then the mastery has not.

[Shangalar]

Since this thread is supposed to have a long and happy life until and throughout the Beta of the next expansion, I will make it STICKY. This means that if you write something uniquely ridiculous, even more people than usual will see it and laugh at you.