6.0 Mage Speculation & Paranoia

[Aeluron Lightsong]

In many games, MIs do zero damage. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Blademaster (from WC3) MI didn't do damage.

TBH, I'd like them to not do damage, but have some form of secondary function besides the Fade-like effect, giving me 3+ extra incoming hits, and pulling mobs I don't want them to pull.

I don't believe they did anything in WCIII or they did minimal damage. I don't remember specifically. It's been awhile since I touched WCIII

[Deleted]

My dream for Mirror Images:

They look like they do exactly what you do. So if you run up and frost nova, so do they. If you're casting evocate, they appear to be doing that too-- but they aren't. I'd like them to do 0 damage, but provide a lot of confusing utility. And, I think while active, all damage dealt to you is split among the images.

I'd love to see the possibilities of having more images, or even a permanent image for Arcane that just mimics you but does nothing, maybe as a glyph. That'd be so fun.

This sounds a bit like Mesmers from GW2, and tbh I would love for blizzard to further explore this, as I think Arcane currently is only an interesting spec for the minmax pve'rs.

[Deleted]

Images have great potential, but the suggestions here are a little too close to Monk's Storm, Earth and Fire, albeit with a CD and without the damage reduction. Blizz aren't that keen on homogenisation, even though they've been shoehorned into it at nearly every corner.

Personally, I think MI has quite an 'Arcane' feel to it, and could be used as some part of a redesign of that spec. Arcane Power being effectively the only Arcane cooldown and just being 'you do more damage' is the dull cherry on a dull rotation. If I could spawn a copy of myself, and have it have some interaction with how I generate charges, well; that's for the designers to contemplate.

Not that any of this will ever happen as the whine if any spec lost it (even if we were given GI as baseline) would be flat out hilarious. Mahh aggro'z! Yawn.

[Pyromelter]

Chromatic bolt!

Shaman got Elemental Blast which is basically a chromatic bolt - I think it would be only fair if mages got a fire/frost/arcane type blast nuke. I wouldn't even mind if it was a complete copy of the shaman talent for that spell.

[Nightfall]

Shaman got Elemental Blast which is basically a chromatic bolt - I think it would be only fair if mages got a fire/frost/arcane type blast nuke. I wouldn't even mind if it was a complete copy of the shaman talent for that spell.

Shaman's Elemental Blast is more like seeking aid of all the elements at once, thus EB deals damage with all elements and buffs the caster with multiple secondary stats. But Mage's Chromatic Bolt IMO should be a more complex fusion of FrostFire damage, which is further empowered with Arcane. So it should apply additional effects to its target, contrary to buffing the caster. E.g. like this:

Chromatic bolt - a powerful 2.5 sec cast (pre-haste) spell, which deals SpellFrostFire damage, uninterruptible, knockbacks the enemy a medium distance and slows its movement speed by 40%, 15-20 sec cd.

40% snare is a nod to Frostfire Bolt, deals increased damage in comparison to FFB/FB/FrB so it's always #1 cast priority, uninterruptible to avoid full 3-school lockout and to make it PVP-viable. Knockback is debatable, I just love the mechanic. I miss Blastwave too much. =)

[Zenny]

Hoping for better looking spell effects, majority of the Fire and Frost spells are just sad.

[Polarthief]

40% snare is a nod to Frostfire Bolt, deals increased damage in comparison to FFB/FB/FrB so it's always #1 cast priority, uninterruptible to avoid full 3-school lockout and to make it PVP-viable. Knockback is debatable, I just love the mechanic. I miss Blastwave too much. =)

So since it has a knockback, I'm assuming it's got a cooldown, making this spell a lot less entertaining, akin to Elemental Blast. Any cast-time spell that's filler-ish is just bleh, and it's why I chose not to play Elemental because they're riddled with that stuff

[Nightfall]

So since it has a knockback, I'm assuming it's got a cooldown, making this spell a lot less entertaining, akin to Elemental Blast. Any cast-time spell that's filler-ish is just bleh, and it's why I chose not to play Elemental because they're riddled with that stuff

Yeah, it's supposed to have 15-20 sec cd to justify its effects, as written. =) Otherwise the PVE rotation becomes (CDs -> ChrB) x ∞.

[LocNess]

Since Fire scales much better then all other specs, devs had to nerf it every major patch to get it back in line
It doesn't necessarily have to scale better than other specs. We have one change coming that helps prop it up at early gear levels.

Hmmm. That is a very good thing. I am assuming maybe just some built in crit? Or making our current 4P built in to the spec (however that might make it very powerful in the long run, or too much like chaos bolts).

[Nightfall]

Maybe it's some kind of baseline crit stacking mechanic, like old Combustion? If your Fire spell doesn't crit, you gain a stacking 5% crit buff, which is removed upon crit.

[Deleted]

Or it could be a spellpower modifier buff and the removal of critical mass.

[Deleted]

They might remove (or drastically lower) the CD on Inferno Blast and adjust the damage numbers just so you can always force a Pyro with 'just' one crit.

Either way, I'm calling it now; it'll be a shoddy fix (though hopefully not as shoddy as giving us a 2x Critical Mass then lowering it every damn patch). They're clearly, for whatever reason, leaving Fire inextricably connected to crit and almost unplayable without it, just like Warriors.

Hey Blizz, word of advice: the Mage/Warrior 'without crit, you do nothing' model doesn't work, the Warlock 'without crit, you do LESS' model does.

[Nightfall]

Well, the main purpose of crit for Fire is Hot Streak, so in order to make it more consistent even at low crit levels Blizz can change HS proc itself. E.g. a Pyroblast! proc could have a 100% crit chance, with crit chance increasing its damage a-la Chaos Bolt. But Warming Up and Hot Streak proc only from non-Pyro crits. Inferno Blast makes sure you can have a HS proc roughly every time IB comes off CD and Pyro! crits help reduce luck/gear dependant damage swings. Higher crit levels linearly increase the damage of Pyro! and slightly increase the amount of HS procs. Less chain-casting Pyros allows to make each of them be more significant, i.e. deal more damage.

What do you think? Too much of a change?

[Deleted]

Well, the main purpose of crit for Fire is Hot Streak, so in order to make it more consistent even at low crit levels Blizz can change HS proc itself. E.g. a Pyroblast! proc could have a 100% crit chance, with crit chance increasing its damage a-la Chaos Bolt. But Warming Up and Hot Streak proc only from non-Pyro crits. Inferno Blast makes sure you can have a HS proc roughly every time IB comes off CD and Pyro! crits help reduce luck/gear dependant damage swings. Higher crit levels linearly increase the damage of Pyro! and slightly increase the amount of HS procs. Less chain-casting Pyros allows to makes each of them be more significant, i.e. deal more damage.

What do you think? Too much of a change?

If anything this thread shows there's literally a hundred ways to change Fire. No use speculating on it :P

[Deleted]

Well, the main purpose of crit for Fire is Hot Streak

Kinda, but crit remains the best stat even after that since it's the only stat that triple dips into combustion damage. First, crits make a more powerful ignite. Second, Pyro hits harder than Fireball, so more pyros in the chain, higher damage. Third, Combustion ticks can crit too.

What do you think? Too much of a change?

I was thinking more "for every Fireball/Scorch/Pyroblast you cast that isn't a crit, your crit chance of these spells raise x%. This effect is reset when you have two crits in a row" - This would make the Critical Mass nerf/buffs disappear mostly and they'd only have to adjust the trigger value instead.

Or, Combustion ticks are always crits/non-crits. It wouldn't fix scaling completely, but at least they don't have to nerf an ability as hard as they did with combustion in 5.4

[Akraen]

Hot streak could just work like fingers of frost :P Since they love to homogenize.

[Deleted]

Hot streak could just work like fingers of frost :P Since they love to homogenize.

Don't make jokes like that. Not funny!

[Jarion]

or FB and PB just have a flat chance to proc heating up.

(I may have missed an entire page before posting this ><)

[Deleted]

I'm not sure of the coding time it would take, but each spec could really do with its own resource. Fire would benefit greatly from a less linear 'NO CRIT NO PYRO' generation of 'heat' or what-the-fuck-ever, that crit speeds up but doesn't hamstring. Can you imagine if Destro only gained embers from direct Incinerate crits? They'd have to zerg crit gems as Fire does, losing all that insane mastery and still probably end up casting only about half of the Chaos Bolt/Shadowburns they do now. Ugly.

Arcane already has debuff stacks, but that's a fairly bandaid/legacy fix to that spec, it could really do with the Holy Power/Ember treatment. Frost doesn't necessarily need anything, but a resource centered around the Icicles would work nicely (consume X icicles to do X).

Anyway, think I'm re-treading old ground here. So many possibilities that will never happen. Ahhh.

[Nightfall]

I'm not sure of the coding time it would take, but each spec could really do with its own resource. Fire would benefit greatly from a less linear 'NO CRIT NO PYRO' generation of 'heat' or what-the-fuck-ever, that crit speeds up but doesn't hamstring. Can you imagine if Destro only gained embers from direct Incinerate crits? They'd have to zerg crit gems as Fire does, losing all that insane mastery and still probably end up casting only about half of the Chaos Bolt/Shadowburns they do now. Ugly.

Arcane already has debuff stacks, but that's a fairly bandaid/legacy fix to that spec, it could really do with the Holy Power/Ember treatment. Frost doesn't necessarily need anything, but a resource centered around the Icicles would work nicely (consume X icicles to do X).

Anyway, think I'm re-treading old ground here. So many possibilities that will never happen. Ahhh.

I think Frost is fine, especially since there are new secondary stats in WoD to scale off of. Fire could use some mechanic to smooth out its all-or-nothing approach. But Arcane is different. I loved the spec back in Wrath, both in PVE and PVP, despite its drawbacks. However I can't stand its MoP iteration. They've added some unfun mechanics upon heavy mana restricton - dire lack of mobility, maintenance buffs - and perfected the obsessive-compulsive aspect of the spec. "Rune, bomb, one, two, three, four, can-do-more - four!, AM, can-do-more - four!, bomb, AM, can-do-more - four!, too low - ABarr, one, two......". I couldn't make myself to really play it this expac.