[Discussion] Mage class - What would we like to see happen to the class in Shadowland

[Vnni]

Hello guys! (WARNING: Wall of Text + English is NOT my mothertongue, please excuse my writing)

I am making a thread that gives some solid feedback on the mage class of what we like and dont like about the class and specs (overall design/fantasy of the class). And I hope you guys can share your opinions to make the thread as solid as possible before I share it on the blizzard forums. Please abstain from replying to this thread if the mage class does not interest you. Please leave comments about balance or your feelings about the class out of this thread. This thread is 100% mage discussion about the class, fantasy, feel and abilities.

The goal of these posts (I am making several of these and will link to the different ones at the bottom of the thread over time) is to give the developers feedback and hopefully inspire the developers to put more work into the different classes to make the game more fun. It has been mentioned several times since blizzcon, but its so true - The fundamentals of the game is character custimization and "feel". What does that mean? Well, you build a character from scratch and you want to make a impact on the world around you. The fundamentals of that is how the game plays, hence - the classes and specs.

Class Fantasy - What makes a mage, a mage?
We all know that a mage is a master of magic arts. In World of Warcraft this means Arcane, Frost and Fire. Other than that, this also includes shapeshifting targets (and yourself if you're a "master magician" - think Medivh & Khadgar), magical enchantments but most of all intelligence. From what I've seen a mage be in the WoW universe both in-game and in their media (fan-fic, stories, Warcraft movie etc) it always includes that to become a mage ("Master of Magic") you have to learn spells, read scrolls, research, trial and error. Why do I not see much of this in-game? I would like to see more of this "learning process" in game. This could also contribute to the leveling experience.

I was really glad to hear them bring back spells from all the different elements to the whole class, and not lock them into specs anymore.
And I hope they bring something fresh and interesting to the table aswell. We've been waiting for several years for more class flavor and some interesting changes, not only pruning. But I'll mention once again, I am glad some abilities are returning - but that's not enough. We need something new aswell!

I'll start off by mentioning some ideas (feel free to improve my ideas or share your own ideas down below and I'll add them)
Can start by saying that this is just spitballing. I am not going into balancing details, only ideas for abilities I/we would like to see. Or at least hint at / could be cool. Sharing what I imagine could be cool and/or fun.

General Abilities/Spells

• Able to give their barrier to teammates (Assist the tank/healer or low-geared teammate, or just simply help someone that had bad positioning.)
• Time Warp - Instead of being the same as bloodlust, make it faster but on a shorter duration?
  Or have several types of "Bloodlust" abilities across the board would be good I think, it might make classes contribute more to certain bosses/situations which makes them more wanted in a group, guild and/or raid. Or simply make it more focus on haste and Bloodlust focus more on damage increase? (More on this at the bottom of the post)

Frost specialization

• Frost/Ice Wall (Create a wall of frost that can act like line of sight for a couple of seconds 2-5 sec?)
• Sleet - Make the targets wet - Lightning abilities crits on wet targets. If hit by blizzard they freeze - Melee and Ice abilities deals additional damage on frozen targets
• Deep Freeze - Bring Deep Freeze back but make make it more interesting - They need to be frozen before they can be deep frozen, not able to deep freeze someone with a proc for instance, like you could back in the day.
• Shatter frozen targets on death - If you manage to deep freeze a target that dies, it shatters and deals frost damage around it (Main key here, timing-based, deep freeze needs to have short duration

Fire specialization

• Greater Pyroblast - This needs to be changed, preferably replaced. Damage that's % based has never felt good. Everyone plays it atm because its stable and powerful. But I am pretty sure that nobody enjoys playing the spell. This can easily be improved.
• More "build up" for fire AOE (Flamestrike) (Example for this idea: If you quickly move your finger through a candle or any fire, it does not really impact you, but if you hold your finger in the flame it burns you, then it melts you. Gradually hurting you a lot.)

Arcane specialization

• Buff teammates with different magical enchantments - Haste, Intellect and Mastery (3 different spells - short duration but powerful, long cooldown (3-5min) - can be precast on a target but timer does not begin until you've entered combat. Mage can buff their teammates before boss pulls)
• Heavy Wisdom - A book shuts at the target from the ground up, damaging all characters close to the target / Or drops a book onto the targets location.
• Telekinesis/Gravity inspired spells - Move enemeis, lock them in place, lift them up and smash them into the ground?

As I mentioned earlier, this is just a few ideas from the top of my head. Feel free to give feedback on them or tell me your ideas, get the discussion going! I will update this over time, now I have to create a couple of more of these so we can bring some ideas straight to the developers! I can share some of the thoughts I had when I came up with these ideas and go a bit more in depth of why I would like to see this.

One of the big ones is the Time Warp idea. I think that more kinds of "Bloodlust" buffs could bring more theorycrafting to the table, more teamwork and more demand of a wider class spectrum. Example: Mage has Time Warp (Mage BL/Power ability), gives secondary stats (mastery,versatility,haste,crit). Bloodlust (Shaman BL/Power ability) gives main stat (int/agi/str), Warlock could give enemies a curse/debuff that makes them unstable (more damage taken), Druid could give a increased healing recieved, Priest could corrupt enemies mind (chance to miss?). I think this would greatly encourage to bring at least one of each of these classes. Then maybe have a limit of how many "Power abilities" cooldowns you can have. Lets say 3 for this example, what classes would you prioritize? Depends on the fight you're about to do, so you need all of them for a raid or your guild. My thought process when it came to this idea is, there will always be a "meta", but if you have many/too many choices, the lines between "top of the line" and "middle class" gets more blurry. Then again, I might be wrong. Thoughts?

My other discussion threads - TBA

[Nefarious Tea]

While I enjoy and appreciate that you want to add essentially a Magicka or Divinity: Original Sin combo system to wow, because it would be cool as fuck, I am not certain that the player base nor least the game itself are capable of handling it.

[Vnni]

While I enjoy and appreciate that you want to add essentially a Magicka or Divinity: Original Sin combo system to wow, because it would be cool as fuck, I am not certain that the player base nor least the game itself are capable of handling it.

That should not stop us from sharing ideas or dreams! As I've stated in the thread, its just to get the ball rolling to spitball some ideas and see what ideas we managed to gather. We all know that a new World of Warcraft on a new engine is about time (lets be honest) but we should set the bar high and hope for the best!

[Insaniam]

A return to crit as the most important stat for fire to build around.

Fire has felt bland as fuck the entire expansion. Even when the numbers are there, it still feels horrible. This was one of the major factors that pushed me away from retail (and I won't state the other ones because they're often hot button topics and I don't want to accidentally derail this thread). If Classic hadn't come around, I never would've resubbed. I pay the 50g respec to play fire outside of raid nights every couple weeks and it feels immensely better than retail fire. When you crit, it matters, and you can feel the difference it makes in both damage done and how enjoyable the spec plays - even without hot streak.

I wouldn't want to lose hot streak on retail as I feel that it's central to making the work of putting crit back toward the top of the stat priority easier for Blizzard. I've lost confidence in Blizzard's ability to design enjoyable classes/specs on retail entirely, but even if they were to take the easy way to making fire feel more enjoyable, I could respect that and they could start to gain my trust in their ability back as a player.

[Specialka]

The issue by making crit central again is that is how we ended with the current fire spec.

When the crit was central, fire was useless at the beginning of each extension, then rise to the top as the stats increases. So they added way so the crit was not mandatory, etc...

And do not start joking plz. A spec or class more enjoyable in Classic? Comon, stop joking. They are bland as fuck. No or simple rotation, very few spells to use in most encounters, etc...

[Insaniam]

The issue by making crit central again is that is how we ended with the current fire spec.

When the crit was central, fire was useless at the beginning of each extension, then rise to the top as the stats increases. So they added way so the crit was not mandatory, etc...

This was still a better situation than we're sitting at right now.

And do not start joking plz. A spec or class more enjoyable in Classic? Comon, stop joking. They are bland as fuck. No or simple rotation, very few spells to use in most encounters, etc...

More enjoyable than current fire? Absolutely. Anyway, I'm not here to start a retail vs classic fight, don't be so sensitive about that one detail of my post and focus on the bigger picture, please.

[Specialka]

Bigger picture is that you can't adapt. You say better, I say you are wrong. Now back up your claim (You won't be able to because it is mostly your opinion).

They could, maybe, tweak it so the spec would resolve more around direct dmg and less around ignite, but that's about it.

[Zexaniro]

fix the garbage frost and fire gameplay. arcane is the only interesting spec left :/

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A return to crit as the most important stat for fire to build around.

Fire has felt bland as fuck the entire expansion. Even when the numbers are there, it still feels horrible. This was one of the major factors that pushed me away from retail (and I won't state the other ones because they're often hot button topics and I don't want to accidentally derail this thread). If Classic hadn't come around, I never would've resubbed. I pay the 50g respec to play fire outside of raid nights every couple weeks and it feels immensely better than retail fire. When you crit, it matters, and you can feel the difference it makes in both damage done and how enjoyable the spec plays - even without hot streak.

I wouldn't want to lose hot streak on retail as I feel that it's central to making the work of putting crit back toward the top of the stat priority easier for Blizzard. I've lost confidence in Blizzard's ability to design enjoyable classes/specs on retail entirely, but even if they were to take the easy way to making fire feel more enjoyable, I could respect that and they could start to gain my trust in their ability back as a player.

mages were completely butchered, arcane is the only salvageable spec with some kind of compelling gameplay. frost being proc central is disgusting; fire is simply boring and low energy as hell. I haven't touched my mage all expansion because of this unmitigated disaster.

agreed that crit needs to gain some more importance again.

[Shakana]

i want fire to have instant AoE instead of procs for instant flamestrike and forcing aoe cast when there's no proc, cause it's useless to use it and time consuming in a rotation (you never use it without procs). Frost at least has a talent that when you use the orb you also get to instant blizzard, it feels better, because you basically have 2 aoes together, and one helps the other and increases damage, still would like for both to have instant aoe. Frost will be better with blizzard regardless. I miss crits too in all specs to be more important as someone said. I want Frost to have a glacial spike ability available as baseline and not on talents. i want so muchhh arcane to be overhauled, it's a meme since years, it's so easy rotation. I love arcane but in wow mage just feels so vanished. Abilities and rotation should be more interesting.

Arcane specialization

Buff teammates with different magical enchantments - Haste, Intellect and Mastery (3 different spells - short duration but powerful, long cooldown (3-5min) - can be precast on a target but timer does not begin until you've entered combat. Mage can buff their teammates before boss pulls)

No, just intellect and haste. Even my demon hunter uses the intellect one, because of shadow abilities. But mage can give Haste, not so much mastery tho, they are so used to manipulate faster or slower arcane, to frost or fire, they would be better of, with just haste and intellect buff. No mastery.

Heavy Wisdom - A book shuts at the target from the ground up, damaging all characters close to the target / Or drops a book onto the targets location.

Why you want just tiny stuff for mage arcane? The whole spec needs more than this. Not bad, it's a nice idea don't get me wrong, i just feel like the arcane section needs more added to.

Telekinesis/Gravity inspired spells - Move enemies, lock them in place, lift them up and smash them into the ground?

I for one feel frost abilities icicles have a bit of telekinesis. When you chose glacial spike, it goes grabbing all the icicles into one and characters don't move much their hands or body, feels like they are controlling it with their minds and they finally send the glacial spike when the icicles are all together.
I would like to see in all specs.
Would be amazing.

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fix the garbage frost and fire gameplay. arcane is the only interesting spec left :/

They are all interesting but personally i choose arcane to go with lately. It's not the best but i can do more stuff while moving than fire and frost (and i really like that tbh) i'm a melee most of the time, so being casting and not moving, makes me feel too rusty.

[matrix123mko]

We all know that a mage is a master of magic arts. In World of Warcraft this means Arcane, Frost and Fire. Other than that, this also includes shapeshifting targets (and yourself if you're a "master magician" - think Medivh & Khadgar), magical enchantments but most of all intelligence. From what I've seen a mage be in the WoW universe both in-game and in their media (fan-fic, stories, Warcraft movie etc) it always includes that to become a mage ("Master of Magic") you have to learn spells, read scrolls, research, trial and error. Why do I not see much of this in-game? I would like to see more of this "learning process" in game. This could also contribute to the leveling experience.

I don't know how to do that but I too want that. It would be cool if we had to gather stuff like Khadgar but I am not sure if it would be fun gameplay-wise.

Sleet - Make the targets wet - Lightning abilities crits on wet targets. If hit by blizzard they freeze - Melee and Ice abilities deals additional damage on frozen targets

Cool. I wonder whether mage would get some lightning.

Buff teammates with different magical enchantments - Haste, Intellect and Mastery (3 different spells - short duration but powerful, long cooldown (3-5min) - can be precast on a target but timer does not begin until you've entered combat. Mage can buff their teammates before boss pulls)

I would love if they shifted arcane mage a bit to support role. Medivh in HotS or Thalyssra is proof that it is possible.

Heavy Wisdom - A book shuts at the target from the ground up, damaging all characters close to the target / Or drops a book onto the targets location.

A bit of joke spells wouldn't be bad. Paladin has a lot of weird hammer spells. I would like to play Deckard Cain.

Telekinesis/Gravity inspired spells - Move enemeis, lock them in place, lift them up and smash them into the ground?

Oh, yes. I loved when Kael grabbed everyone into the sky.

[durrtygoodz]

fix the garbage frost and fire gameplay. arcane is the only interesting spec left :/

You're having a laugh right? Arcane has remained exactly the same for over a decade. The same buttons, the same animations, the same mechanics. If it was a champion in LoL, Riot would have done a complete overhaul years ago deeming it "not fit for purpose". If it was a dog, I would put it down. The only changes arcane has ever gotten have been to further tone down an already outdated and moronic spec.

If this isn't the expansion where arcane gets a complete overhaul from the ground up I won't be playing mage (if i play at all).

[matrix123mko]

i want fire to have instant AoE. I miss crits too in all specs to be more important as someone said. I want Frost to have a glacial spike ability available as baseline and not on talents. i want so muchhh arcane to be overhauled, it's a meme since years, it's so easy rotation. I love arcane but in wow mage just feels so vanished. Abilities and rotation should be more interesting.

Arcane was more interesting when arcane missiles worked with arcane charges. Currently they are kind of boring proc.

I for one feel frost abilities icicles have a bit of telekinesis. When you chose glacial spike, it goes grabbing all the icicles into one and characters don't move much their hands or body, feels like they are controlling it with their minds and they finally send the glacial spike when the icicles are all together.
I would like to see in all specs.
Would be amazing.

What about making icicles work on every spec ability. Frost - icicle, arcane - arcane spark, fire - cinder. You could have five and you could conjure different spells by merging them. Full frost for glacial spike. Full arcane for some arcane explosion, which has some synergy with arcane charges. Full fire for DoT. Combo would work by rule that for each icicle you get longer freeze but every cinder counts like one icicle less. Each cinder extends the DoT but icicle counts like less cinders. Arcane spark increases the AoE. If you use icicle+cinder, you get more armor penetration.

[Shakana]

Arcane was more interesting when arcane missiles worked with arcane charges. Currently they are kind of boring proc.



What about making icicles work on every spec ability. Frost - icicle, arcane - arcane spark, fire - cinder. You could have five and you could conjure different spells by merging them. Full frost for glacial spike. Full arcane for some arcane explosion, which has some synergy with arcane charges. Full fire for DoT. Combo would work by rule that for each icicle you get longer freeze but every cinder counts like one icicle less. Each cinder extends the DoT but icicle counts like less cinders. Arcane spark increases the AoE. If you use icicle+cinder, you get more armor penetration.

I just made a mage in BfA although i tried to level up a mage many times before. And i tried all specs. But never to max level to enjoy a full-play. Now i am, and i only like to use fire for certain encounters, frost is like fire gameplay to me, and arcane is like different of the two. I like to use arcane way more, but arcane missiles i barely like to use, i do ofc, but i would prefer to gain arcane charges too for that. I go sometimes close to the danger/boss and do some arcane explosion to get arcane charges fast when i want to maximize my dps (when charged up is on cd) and use my arcane barrage that i can even keep up when it's 2 bosses together, like hounds at antorus/general. I like having the ability to damage 2 things at once, arcane missiles don't give me that sort of thing.

What you said there is really interesting, i would totally love that. But i don't usually like DoT's i run from dot classes like who runs from 10 players vs 1 in pvp. lol
Indeed khadgar is my mentor, i love him (for mage related stuff) lol so do medivh, medivh is so interesting, was even a necromancer before, and it's a guardian and mage, he is a true sorcerer, that use everything basically. I would like for blizzard to give players more ways to choose their magic, even like, being able to get stuff from fire and frost, they can be messed around together and should, since arcane is their "electricity" and frost is like the ice part of a fridge and fire is like a oven, and they work by arcane.

And as khadgar did there, arcane could fuel more frost and fire abilities, way more frequently. just like i said about being the electricity.

"Arcane spark increases the AoE. If you use icicle+cinder, you get more armor penetration." love it Bring me this. I would be happy.

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You're having a laugh right? Arcane has remained exactly the same for over a decade. The same buttons, the same animations, the same mechanics. If it was a champion in LoL, Riot would have done a complete overhaul years ago deeming it "not fit for purpose". If it was a dog, I would put it down. The only changes arcane has ever gotten have been to further tone down an already outdated and moronic spec.

If this isn't the expansion where arcane gets a complete overhaul from the ground up I won't be playing mage (if i play at all).

I'm at the same boat. I can play arcane but it remains as the exact same as ever. Just changed a bit on gameplay but not ability wise. No more or less. It's so simple.

Keyboard smash arcane gameplay:

[Vnni]

Why you want just tiny stuff for mage arcane? The whole spec needs more than this. Not bad, it's a nice idea don't get me wrong, i just feel like the arcane section needs more added to.

- - - Updated - - -

I've only made some examples of some abilities that I personally think could be cool. I encourage you to share your ideas and I'll add them to the list!

Cool. I wonder whether mage would get some lightning.

I was thinking that mages will synergy well with elemental mages. A more direct-synergy, but synergy between specs and classes would be good, but in all directions at once so your class/spec wont become dependant on another class/spec. Because that wont work.

[matrix123mko]

I just made a mage in BfA although i tried to level up a mage many times before. And i tried all specs. But never to max level to enjoy a full-play. Now i am, and i only like to use fire for certain encounters, frost is like fire gameplay to me, and arcane is like different of the two. I like to use arcane way more, but arcane missiles i barely like to use, i do ofc, but i would prefer to gain arcane charges too for that. I go sometimes close to the danger/boss and do some arcane explosion to get arcane charges fast when i want to maximize my dps (when charged up is on cd) and use my arcane barrage that i can even keep up when it's 2 bosses together, like hounds at antorus/general. I like having the ability to damage 2 things at once, arcane missiles don't give me that sort of thing.

Arcane missiles are kind of useless nowadays. All they give is a bit of free damage from time to time.

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I was thinking that mages will synergy well with elemental mages. A more direct-synergy, but synergy between specs and classes would be good, but in all directions at once so your class/spec wont become dependant on another class/spec. Because that wont work.

Synergies would be cool. I imagine paladins could become best buddies with priests.

[Zexaniro]

You're having a laugh right? Arcane has remained exactly the same for over a decade. The same buttons, the same animations, the same mechanics. If it was a champion in LoL, Riot would have done a complete overhaul years ago deeming it "not fit for purpose". If it was a dog, I would put it down. The only changes arcane has ever gotten have been to further tone down an already outdated and moronic spec.

If this isn't the expansion where arcane gets a complete overhaul from the ground up I won't be playing mage (if i play at all).

that's why arcane is the only salvageable mage spec left, it hasn't been butchered like the other two.

[matrix123mko]

Leave arcane alone, if you wanna play piano, go another specs. What would I change, is make arcane orb baseline for them and change the visuals.

Arcane missiles need to have damage increase with arcane charges.

[Nefarious Tea]

This was still a better situation than we're sitting at right now.



More enjoyable than current fire? Absolutely. Anyway, I'm not here to start a retail vs classic fight, don't be so sensitive about that one detail of my post and focus on the bigger picture, please.

How is vanilla fire, where you literally can’t play in half the raids because mobs are immune to fire, better than now? How is vanilla fire, where you press one button to spam fireball more fun than now?

[Insaniam]

How is vanilla fire, where you literally can’t play in half the raids because mobs are immune to fire, better than now? How is vanilla fire, where you press one button to spam fireball more fun than now?

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post51880455

[Natrii]

I would like to see Arcane and some other specs in the game to take a damage cut. The trade off is having support specs, do medium dps and have abilities that increase the damage and utility for the rest of your group/raid.

Let our ability usage tie to short term buffs for the group.

Say use our current arcane charge system, releasing the charges with arcane barrage would generate a buff.

1 charges - Debuff the target with arcane instability making them take 5% increased damage last 20s
2 charges - Increases the movement and attack speed of allies in 30y by 10% for 15s
3 charges - Allies within 30y take 20%increased healing for 10s
4 charges - Allies within 30y have 3% increased critical strike for 15s

Arcane Missiles - Dampen damage taken by 1% per stack within 12y of the target, uses all arcane charges.


I would like to see specs with utility like this pop up, instead of just gogo pure damage.