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