The new mage talents

[myarluu]

now if only pom affected arcane missles :]

[CreativeInstitute]

Finally, mage changes that look quite nice. Hopefully these are just a taste of things to come.

ARCANE

Arcane Subtley - Lower your target's resistances by 5/10 changed to 15/30% dispel resist
Bravo! Lowering resistance by 10 was useless. Finally it won't be hopeless sheeping/nova'ing against priests/pallys.

Wand Specialization - Removed
WTF! That's a ****ing HUUUUGE dps nerf to us, but I think I'll get through it. :'(

Arcane Fortitude - Moved to Wand Specialization's spot, changed to 3 ranks, now provides 50/100/150% of your Intellect into armor.
Nice. More armor is good. Can't really complain with this one. Good for PvP, but if you don't need it, don't spec it.

Focus Magic - New Tier 3 talent, increases magic damage taken by the target by 150, lasts 1 min or 50 charges.
So we get an extra 150 spell power for 50 casts? Not bad I guess, but don't like how it costs 1000 mana.....

Improved Mana Shield - Renamed Arcane Shielding, now increases the armor and resistances gained by the mage by 25/50%.
Quite interesting. Mage armor already reduces the duration of magical effects by 50%, and specced, now has increased resistance. Might give warlocks a bit of a hard time now

Empowered Arcane Missiles - Renamed Arcane Empowerment, now Increases the damage of your Arcane Missiles spell by an amount equal to 15/30/45% of your spell power and the damage of your Arcane Blast by 3/6/9% of your spell power.
Alright, arcane raiding spec imminent.

Potent Spirit - Removed, replaced by Arcane Flows. Reduces the cooldown of your Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility spells by 30/60 secs.
Nice for Pom Pyro mages. 2 mins for huge nukes is quite good.

Missile Barrage - Added in place of Netherwind Presence. Gives your Arcane Blast, Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt spells a 15% chance to reduce the channeled duration of the next Arcane Missiles spell by 2.5 secs and fire missiles every .5 secs.
Yeah, arcane looks very good for raiding with this.



FIRE

Incineration - Moved to tier 1, now 3 ranks, Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire Blast, Scorch, Arcane Blast and Cone of Cold spells by 2/4/6%.
Interesting that it effects non-fire spells. I like.

Burning Determination - New Tier 2 talent, When Interrupted or Silenced you have a 50/100% chance to become immune to both mechanics for 10 seconds.
That's just awesome.

Improved Scorch - More damage types added, now your Scorch spells have a 33/66/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Fire, Frost and Arcane damage, increasing damage taken by 2/4/6/6/10% and lasts 30 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.
Very, very cool. Now we have mages who support each other with different specs in a raid. THIS is what we need more of.

Blast Wave - Knockback added, now a wave of flame radiates outward from the caster, damaging all enemies caught within the blast for 154 to 186 Fire damage, knocking them back and Dazing them for 6 seconds.
Yay! Finally get a knockback! Wonder how long it is, but I like it.

Fiery Payback - Changed to, When below 35% health all Physical and Fire damage taken is reduced by 10/20% and your Pyroblast spell's cast time is reduced by 1.75/3.5 secs.
Situational, but could be very nice. I'm looking at a more PvE view for this, with bosses that do aoe or some crap, hit them back with 1.5 sec pyroblast.

Dragon's Breath - Disorient changed from 3 sec to 5 sec
Nice.

Burnout - Talent changed to read, Increases your spell critical damage bonus with all Fire spells by 5/10/15/20/25% but your spell criticals cost an additional 1/2/3/4/5% of the spell's cost.
This was one of my favorite talents when I first saw it, and now, it's even better. I think anyway. Hopefully 5% of the mana cost of the spell is less than 1% of your base mana. Meh, it's a good change anyway.

Living Bomb - Mana drain added, The caster becomes a living bomb, causing 51 Fire damage to all enemies within 10 yards every 2 sec. After 6 seconds, a fiery explosion occurs causing 212 Fire damage to all enemies within 10 yards and burning 106 mana, dealing damage equal to the amount drained.
Still not the greatest talent. Mana drain is cool I guess.


FROST

Shattered Barrier - New Tier 6 talent that gives your Ice Barrier spell a 50/100% chance to trigger a Frost Nova when it is destroyed.
That's just fantastic. Add that to shatter shield, and melee will have a hard time catching us

Winter's Grasp - Renamed to Fingers of Frost, which gives your Frost damage spells a 5/10% chance to apply the Fingers of Frost effect, which treats your next Frost spell cast on the target as if the target were Frozen. Lasts 10 seconds.
I can't tell if this has been changed, other than the name?

Brain Freeze - Changed to give your Frost damage spells have a 5/10/15% chance to cause your next Fireball spell to be instant cast and cost no mana.
Would have preferred it be a Frostbolt instant/no mana cast, but I can't complain. Instant cast is instant cast.

Improved Water Elemental - Changed to increase the duration of your Summon Water Elemental spell by 5/10/1515 sec and your Water Elemental heals all party or raid members 1/2/3% of their total health every 5 secs.
An extra one thousand five hundred and fifteen seconds!!!!!!!! OMG!!!!
Ok I know it's a typo but yeah the health regen is very cool

Chilled to the Bone - Changed to increase the damage caused by your Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt and Ice Lance spells by 1/2/3/4/5% and reduces the movement speed of all chilled targets by an additional 2/4/6/8/10%.
Added Frostfire Bolt in there. Nice for raiders who are going for the Frostfire nuke spec.

Deep Freeze - Damage added, causes 694 to 806 Frost damage and stuns the target for 5 seconds. Only usable on Frozen targets.
Ok, here it says 694-806 dmg, on the talent calculator it says 1319-1531 damage. Nice addition of damage though.



Damn, if this is what Blizzard consider a 'polish pass', I can't wait till the next one!

LET THIS BE HEARD TO ALL MAGES! BLIZZARD HEARS OUR CRIES!

Oh yeah, I'm really, really bored here at work. Sorry for the wall of text

[Abaraion]

seems that kalgan rerolled mage...
No, i must say, REALLY nice changes indeed! ;D

[Delijica]

Now that Deep Freeze has damage added to it and it can only be used on frozen targets...shatter combo anyone?
Also, it might be a little over the top but, it would be nice of they added a talent in the arcane tree that "increases the damage done by your arcane spells by X%". I mean, both fire and frost trees have a couple of these talents so, why not arcane?

About the Scorch debuff "nerf".... Beta testers on th EJ forums have confirmed that Frostfire gains double the effect of buffs such as Curse of Elements because of it's dual nature so it would probably mean that, with the old Scorch damage increase, the damage of Frostfire Bolt would be increases by 30%, 15% for each school of magic and that would be a bit too much.

[Statix]

These are the talents Mages deserve. The only problem is, there are so many powerful talents that it's very hard to decide which ones you should take. 17/0/54 for instance, it's very hard to decide where you spend your points. You can't just put 10 Talent Points above Water Elemental, because there are very good talents that are worth a total of 13 Talent Points.

Same goes for Arcane, so many nice talents, but not nearly enough Talent Points to spend. I hope they change this is the near future. Other than that, I'm very happy with all these changes, especcially the damage added to Deep Freeze.

[Dareos]

Yay.. now every mage will be forced into a 11/18/x specc to give Magic Focus and Imp. Scorch to the raid! Arguably, you only need one mage to keep Imp. Scorch up and you only need one mage, with a huuuuuuge manapool, to keep Arcane Focus up, but.. what if this mage can't attend the raid? Another mage has to respec into it..

And also yay about Firestarter! Free Flamestrike, with small radius, after I just knocked all my enemys back! Hurray!

/QQ

I might be still in a QQ-mood, but these changes don't seem -that- amazing to me. They are nice, no doubt in that, but it just doesn't feel how it should be. Good intentions, but execution isn't all that great...

4 out of 6 of our 41 and 51 point talents are mainly PvP abilities (Living Bomb, Deep Freeze, Dragon's Breath, Slow). Yeah, that's fine, but WoW isn't just about PvP.

Guess we'll see what goes live and what other changes they will make. It goes in a good direction, but in my opinion we are not quite there yet.

[Statix]

As a PVP Mage, I couldn't care less about Mages in PVE. These new talents are so amazing, I can't wait to use them. Only problem is, there are so many possible PVP talents right now, that it's pretty hard to decide which one to take.

[ant1pathy]

As a PVP Mage, I couldn't care less about Mages in PVE. These new talents are so amazing, I can't wait to use them. Only problem is, there are so many possible PVP talents right now, that it's pretty hard to decide which one to take.

That's funny, because WoW is primarily a PVE game. And as a PVE Mage, I couldn't care less about PVP.

[Dareos]

As a PVP Mage, I couldn't care less about Mages in PVE. These new talents are so amazing, I can't wait to use them. Only problem is, there are so many possible PVP talents right now, that it's pretty hard to decide which one to take.

As a PVE Mage, I couldn't care less about Mages in PVP.
See whut I did thar?? *sighs*

Guys, seriously.. we are one class... both aspects of the game should have space in this game and we should support each other to be in the top brackets of both aspects.
But instead of supporting each other, you continue to fight your little "PVP takes so much more skill as PVE lol"-war.. Who the fuck cares?

[Calath]

Shattered Barrier - New Tier 6 talent that gives your Ice Barrier spell a 50/100% chance to trigger a Frost Nova when it is destroyed.
That's just fantastic. Add that to shatter shield, and melee will have a hard time catching us

I might be bad at searching for stuff, but I couldn't find Shatter Shield on the spell list anymore. Is it removed? o_o

Winter's Grasp - Renamed to Fingers of Frost, which gives your Frost damage spells a 5/10% chance to apply the Fingers of Frost effect, which treats your next Frost spell cast on the target as if the target were Frozen. Lasts 10 seconds.
I can't tell if this has been changed, other than the name?

It used to be a buff that lasted for 5 seconds, now it's nerfed to the next frost spell. That one had it coming, not really surprising. With 2-3 mages in PvE, that debuff would've been up probably around 80% of the boss fight, allowing mages to have 70% chance to crit on all their spells constantly. We would've reigned the damage meters supreme.

[Old Coot]

Only problem is, there are so many possible PVP talents right now, that it's pretty hard to decide which one to take.

People laughed at me and thought I was nuts when I leveled a 2nd mage

[Statix]

People laughed at me and thought I was nuts when I leveled a 2nd mage

That's not such a bad idea. Before these new changes I was sure that I was going to go 60/11/0, but now 17/0/54 and 0/37/34 are very tempting aswell. I'm sure there are more, but those seem really nice.

[Calath]

Where has Shatter Shield gone? Someone help me look. 8D

[Araneatrox]

Burnout - Talent changed to read, Increases your spell critical damage bonus with all Fire spells by 5/10/15/20/25% but your spell criticals cost an additional 1/2/3/4/5% of the spell's cost.
This was one of my favorite talents when I first saw it, and now, it's even better. I think anyway. Hopefully 5% of the mana cost of the spell is less than 1% of your base mana. Meh, it's a good change anyway.

Your forgetting something about that change aswell... Master of Elements is still in the Talent Build. Which Refunds 30% Of the base mana cost of a critical, This way you only get 25% back for an extra 25% crit damage. Thats something i can live with.

[kuud]

That's funny, because WoW is primarily a PVE game. And as a PVE Mage, I couldn't care less about PVP.

That's so pre-tbc.

[Artercy]

So I'm a little confused we have a scorch buff right now that stacks 5 times for a total of 15% but the way it looks now does it stack 5 times at 10% each time for 50% and ffb gets this 2x? >.<

[Araneatrox]

So I'm a little confused we have a scorch buff right now that stacks 5 times for a total of 15% but the way it looks now does it stack 5 times at 10% each time for 50% and ffb gets this 2x? >.<

No it stacks upto a maximum of 10% 2% a time stackiing upto 5.

[CreativeInstitute]

I might be bad at searching for stuff, but I couldn't find Shatter Shield on the spell list anymore. Is it removed? o_o

Uh oh. Hmm, I'll have a look too. I think they may have taken it away. :'(

It used to be a buff that lasted for 5 seconds, now it's nerfed to the next frost spell. That one had it coming, not really surprising. With 2-3 mages in PvE, that debuff would've been up probably around 80% of the boss fight, allowing mages to have 70% chance to crit on all their spells constantly. We would've reigned the damage meters supreme.

Ah yes, that's right. Well, I guess that's fair enough. Not that the mages damage output would be too big (that doesn't bother me) but I'd feel sorry for any tank who'll be trying to hold aggro against multiple frost mages critting 70+% of the time. The mage would be aggro capped. Damage output limited by tanks aggro generation.

People laughed at me and thought I was nuts when I leveled a 2nd mage

Uh, I still think it would be easier just to respec with the one mage.

It would suck, really really hard, leveling/gearing up two different characters of the same class. Better off putting that time into the one toon. Besides 50g for a respec really isn't much these days.

Your forgetting something about that change aswell... Master of Elements is still in the Talent Build. Which Refunds 30% Of the base mana cost of a critical, This way you only get 25% back for an extra 25% crit damage. Thats something i can live with.

Yeah, that's right. So you're still benefiting from the crits.

So I'm a little confused we have a scorch buff right now that stacks 5 times for a total of 15% but the way it looks now does it stack 5 times at 10% each time for 50% and ffb gets this 2x? >.<

Debuff increases damage by 2%, stacks 5 times = 10% damage increased

[Pyrostemplar]

Ok, my take on this...

1st, kudos to Blizzard to finally looking more than 10 minutes at mages. Also grats for spotting the obvious staking issue in WG.

Now, for the changes.. Generally in the good direction, there are a couple things that I think will need some polishing and the big question still remains.

Arcane changes were not overwhelming but generally good - rotations become far simpler in the presence of haste. Currently it looks like being a fine tree, although I would like to see it buffed a bit further. Also a bit at odds with the new debuff talent... mages are not debuffers but nukers FFS - we are not warlocks, and increasing debuffs as an excuse to not provide dmg is lame.

Fire has had some significant changes and AOE modifications. Now... what does Blizzard wants with the tree? AOE? AOE = PVE. Blast wave changes are actually bad for PVE - KB looks nice only for PVP... Instant FS is interesting if it is the 1st cast - no one usually follows a DB or BW with a FS, and the low radius still hurts it a lot, despite the base dmg improvement - proc talent depending on longuish CD (talented) skills is just weird. So I'd say it is pretty useless. Living bomb still sucks... PVP talent at the end of a weak PVP tree.

Playing with fire and Fiery payback should replace respective names - if the FPB goes live as it is the temptation of exploiting it on PVE encounters will be there... 1.5s Pyros FTW :P

Frost got a needed WG correction, although I think they overdid it - the talent now sucks a bit. Also of consideration is that despite indirect dmg improvements (scorch debuff affecting it), it went back to a boring spam frostbolt x 100 playstyle


Big questions:

-How will and elementalist FFB spec fare and scale? Will it take both trees strenghts? will it double dip?
-How will the arcane spec fare compared to other classes DPS/Nuking trees? How will the mage fare?

In my opinion the mage main tree should be second in DPS only to rogues - and not much at that. That comes with the class description and with the current utility balancing. We shall see what the future brings though...

[auren]

They are crap. Don't suck up the shit Blizzard through at us again. Its a sugar coated turd and your licking it if u like em.


The things we needed, that we didn't actually get:

Better spell coefficients
Anti-pushback talents for arcane and frost
Shorter cooldowns (Arcane Flows is good, but other trees need shorter cooldowns)
Better Armors to complete with locks


Unless you wish to continue to bow to your semi-god warlocks, don't be a sucker and do some research.



Only PvP mages will be happy...