Battle For Azeroth: Mage Megathread (Alpha/Beta)

[Swizzle]

*snip*

The loss of CR/LIG/OL really hurt Lance in general.

I knew Ebonbolt dropped far down there, but what traits are we working with that IL got pushed so far down also?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

I knew Ebonbolt dropped far down there, but what traits are we working with that IL got pushed so far down also?

Lost:
Ice Lance nerfed further than the other spells were in the initial build.
Lonely Winter nerfed enough that Bone Chilling overtakes it.
Let It Go's 16+% crit damage.
Obsidian Lance's 12+% frozen damage.
Chain Reaction's nigh-100% uptime of 30% damage.
Bracers turned into a talent and dropped from 6 to 5 stacks.
4pT21's 20% damage after Flurry.
2 5-digit Int procs on a (functionally) 4-digit coefficient.
Chilled to the Core/Spellborne being multipliers on the rest of Lance's multipliers.

Gained:
Talent tuning/lack thereof.

We lost a lot of instances of stupid things like Splitting Ice being the best single target. Icicles becoming their own actual spell rather than entirely dependent on Frostbolt damage is also a factor in moving away from Lonely Winter being top. Mastery itself being made significantly stronger than it has been in the past, bumping the DPCT of Orb/Flurry/Frostbolt, but not Lance.

[Swizzle]

Lost:
Ice Lance nerfed further than the other spells were in the initial build.
Lonely Winter nerfed enough that Bone Chilling overtakes it.
Let It Go's 16+% crit damage.
Obsidian Lance's 12+% frozen damage.
Chain Reaction's nigh-100% uptime of 30% damage.
Bracers turned into a talent and dropped from 6 to 5 stacks.
4pT21's 20% damage after Flurry.
2 5-digit Int procs on a (functionally) 4-digit coefficient.
Chilled to the Core/Spellborne being multipliers on the rest of Lance's multipliers.

Gained:
Talent tuning/lack thereof.

We lost a lot of instances of stupid things like Splitting Ice being the best single target. Icicles becoming their own actual spell rather than entirely dependent on Frostbolt damage is also a factor in moving away from Lonely Winter being top. Mastery itself being made significantly stronger than it has been in the past, bumping the DPCT of Orb/Flurry/Frostbolt, but not Lance.

Christ, I completely forgot about the Bracer and Mastery changes in regards to IL. I don't know if the current Chain Reaction is bugged for you as well, but I have it up 100% of the time since it procs off of any IL not just frozen. It's a pain maintaining it and it's definite DPS loss to do so, but that talent just feels weird on that row. Two generator talents and...and IL buff one.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Christ, I completely forgot about the Bracer and Mastery changes in regards to IL. I don't know if the current Chain Reaction is bugged for you as well, but I have it up 100% of the time since it procs off of any IL not just frozen. It's a pain maintaining it and it's definite DPS loss to do so, but that talent just feels weird on that row. Two generator talents and...and IL buff one.

Haven't logged beta since patch but it's very likely they just copied bracer code over and will change it next build to match the text.

The position is weird but they all deal with procs, just it's on spending rather than generating. It's very likely a "we're out of time, throw something at this that can't break the spec in any weird and wonderful ways" sort of choice. Disappointing, but at least we're not going to find some hilarious bug a la Ignite compression with next to no time to fix it.

[Ladyoftheforest]

The loss of CR/LIG/OL really hurt Lance in general.

Wieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.. happy to see Glacial Spike on top with comet storm second (could be a good pick in single target with GS) GS is life!

P.S Still no Beta *sad face*

[Swizzle]

Wieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.. happy to see Glacial Spike on top with comet storm second (could be a good pick in single target with GS) GS is life!

P.S Still no Beta *sad face*

Keep in mind DPET does not equal DPS. Unless the above graph factors in the CD of a spell, it just shows how much damage a spell does divided by the amount of time it takes to cast it.

[Ladyoftheforest]

Keep in mind DPET does not equal DPS. Unless the above graph factors in the CD of a spell, it just shows how much damage a spell does divided by the amount of time it takes to cast it.

Yesh, am aware. I'm just excited. The talents can work with GS and the HoA trait isn't bad when combined with GS. (Frostbolt extra crit and damage). As long as it's marginally competitive I'll be happy.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

For what little it's worth, given nothing's really tuned all that well, that is the top performing talent set at the moment.

[Deleted]

Which spect do u think will be stronger for raiding?

[Obelisk Kai]

I just learned recently that water jet has been removed.

Firstly...woohoo! Water Jet is being removed!

Secondly, does anyone know what impact this will have on lonely winter?

What I mean is that with water jet there was a level of interactivity with the pet to generate more charges of Fingers of Frost. That is now removed (and thank god, Water Jet was one of the clunkiest abilities we ever received!). To justify not taking Lonely Winter, you had to be able to manage your elemental perfectly (and even then you'd do inferior DPS to taking lonely winter).

However we now leave in a world without water jet and without our artifacts and all the lovely modifiers our artifacts had which could have had an impact on talent selection.

Basically, do people feel Lonely Winter will still be the go to choice OR will the removal of water jet mean that lonely winter will become an aesthetic choice? That if you truly hate the pet get rid of it by taking lonely winter but Bone Chilling will be the better option overall.

I wouldn't mind our pet at all if he gets a graphical overhaul (fingers crossed for this week's build) and is just a fire and forget waterbolt spammer again.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Depends on final tuning. Right now, BC beats it.

I'm not going to try and make bets on final tuning because that's just asking for trouble.

[Obelisk Kai]

Depends on final tuning. Right now, BC beats it.

I'm not going to try and make bets on final tuning because that's just asking for trouble.

It's interesting that the marksmanship talent Lone Wolf, which is similar to Lonely Winter, was converted into a passive that increases MM Hunter damage by a certain amount if the pet is not out.

To achieve the same effect, Frost Mages have to talent it. I wonder if Lone Wolf is a success that in the long term we could see a similar system applied to Frost. Or if Blizzard considers the pet such a big part of frost that if you truly want to be shot of it, you'll have to make the choice to talent it.

Given that Big Blue is just a waterbolt generator now it seems that lonely winter is truly only an aesthetic choice. It's going to have no real effect on your raid gameplay if you have him out or not.

But as you said it's all going to come down to the numbers in the end. And scaling could make LW the talent of choice towards the end of BFA if bone chilling has the edge early on.

I guess we have to see.

[Deleted]

So what spec is atm top cuase i only see frost discussions are the other 2 specs realy that bad for bfa ?

[Swizzle]

So what spec is atm top cuase i only see frost discussions are the other 2 specs realy that bad for bfa ?

Arcane is weird for me on beta and since it's the start of an expansion without any artifact perks, Fire is pretty iffy. That said, we're still waiting on the numbers pass for tuning. I will say all three specs feel pretty bad and bland compared to what Warlocks are getting.

[The Archmage]

Arcane is weird for me on beta and since it's the start of an expansion without any artifact perks, Fire is pretty iffy. That said, we're still waiting on the numbers pass for tuning. I will say all three specs feel pretty bad and bland compared to what Warlocks are getting.

I cannot abstain myself from confirming this. I have been a main Mage since BC, and i never felt so bad about my class as i am feeling now. We are a month away from pre-patch and all our specs seem unpolished, unfinished. No cool new additions, no relevant talent changes, no reworks... nothing. We are still stuck with our abominations (Rune of Power, Incanter's Flow, Unstable Magic) and every spec is still totally reliant on a completely RNG mechanic via lifechanging procs (Fingers of Frost and Mind Freeze, Clearcasting, Pyroclasm - different names for the same RNG crap that make or break our overall performance).

I feel entitled to be worried now. And i generally am not a "the sky is falling" guy.

[Swizzle]

I cannot abstain myself from confirming this. I have been a main Mage since BC, and i never felt so bad about my class as i am feeling now. We are a month away from pre-patch and all our specs seem unpolished, unfinished. No cool new additions, no relevant talent changes, no reworks... nothing. We are still stuck with our abominations (Rune of Power, Incanter's Flow, Unstable Magic) and every spec is still totally reliant on a completely RNG mechanic via lifechanging procs (Fingers of Frost and Mind Freeze, Clearcasting, Pyroclasm - different names for the same RNG crap that make or break our overall performance).

I feel entitled to be worried now. And i generally am not a "the sky is falling" guy.

Yeah, our visuals feel the weakest out of any caster at this point. Frost feels like it's fresh outta 2007. Fire still shares an animation with the Warlock Imp. Arcane Missiles look cool, but that's about it. Arcane Orb moves way too fast to be noticeable and Blast is still what it's always been. The Elemental is still the same Vanilla model. That would all be fine if we had great engaging gameplay that felt rewarding. But with Fire losing one form of Hot Streak generator, their Bracer talent having a lower proc chance than it does on live (had one dungeon run where it procced a grand total of one times), and Frost losing all but two Artifact perks, our specs feel bare bones and boring.

Also, I'm pretty sure we're the only caster class now that only has a standard 2 button rotation with a potential third being thrown in every once in a while.

[Deleted]

Yeah, our visuals feel the weakest out of any caster at this point. Frost feels like it's fresh outta 2007. Fire still shares an animation with the Warlock Imp. Arcane Missiles look cool, but that's about it. Arcane Orb moves way too fast to be noticeable and Blast is still what it's always been. The Elemental is still the same Vanilla model. That would all be fine if we had great engaging gameplay that felt rewarding. But with Fire losing one form of Hot Streak generator, their Bracer talent having a lower proc chance than it does on live (had one dungeon run where it procced a grand total of one times), and Frost losing all but two Artifact perks, our specs feel bare bones and boring.

Also, I'm pretty sure we're the only caster class now that only has a standard 2 button rotation with a potential third being thrown in every once in a while.

After being away from wow since alpha release of BFA and having the same 'worry' feeling toward the class i am playing since BC, I can say your post just made me completly not hyped anymore for expansion changes. I was hoping there is a new row for talents, or something that give a fresh feeling to any specs, to find out what has changed in the last 5 months, and its nothing..... what we got is utterly trash, bare bone specs with 2 buttons and hopes of RNG praying.

Its the first time since 5 expansions since I am considering either not coming back at least for the start of an expasion or simply look for a difrent class, which is just sad.

[Deleted]

Arcane is weird for me on beta and since it's the start of an expansion without any artifact perks, Fire is pretty iffy. That said, we're still waiting on the numbers pass for tuning. I will say all three specs feel pretty bad and bland compared to what Warlocks are getting.

Hmm oke basically some one got into blizzard that realy hated mages and loves warlocks haha seems like our days of being the best caster are over
Time to reroll a other class than that actualy gives something to the raid/ guild other than baseline dps and a dummy to keep alive lol

[Bugg]

A few noob questions regarding the wowhead BfA talent trees:

Fost:
1). Am I correct in thinking that the Frost AoE was severely nerfed?
2). Lv 60 Frozen touch was nerfed from 40% on live to 20%... what's up with this?...

Fire:
1). What's the reasoning behind choosing a lv100 talent now?

[klaps_05]

So what spec is atm top cuase i only see frost discussions are the other 2 specs realy that bad for bfa ?

Gotta wait sims for final, being able to stack your azerite traits so you can triple down on traits etc can also have a strong impact. There are some traits which are not 100% clear how they work - like the 33% trait for comet storm per flurry, it could stack to 100% with 3 traits which could be interesting.

For mythics I like Arcane but Fire could be better scaling in certain dungeons. For ST/raids its probably gonna be Frost for the majority of fights, arcane here and there.