Mage - Cataclysm Preview Compilation

[Boubouille]

This is a compilation of the Cataclysm-related information released this week, including the official previews and important blue posts. I do realize that some of the class forums already have sticky topics, this topic is merely here to discuss this week's preview and changes and will eventually fall into the abyss of the class forums.

Official Class Preview

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we’ll be making lots of changes and additions to class talents and abilities across the board. In this preview, you’ll get an early look at what's in store for the mage class, including a rundown of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the different talent specs.

New Mage Spells

Flame Orb (available at level 81): Inspired by Prince Taldaram’s abilities in Ahn'kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in front in a straight line, sending beams that cause fire damage to passing targets. Once it’s cast, the mage is free to begin casting other spells as the Flame Orb travels. While the spell will be useful to any spec, Fire mages will have talents that improve it, possibly causing the Flame Orb to explode when it reaches its destination.

Time Warp (level 83): Grants a passive Haste effect much like Bloodlust or Heroism to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the mage's own movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive with Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning you can’t benefit from both if you’ve got the Exhaustion debuff, though the movement-speed increase will still work even when under the effects of Exhaustion.

Wall of Fog (level 85): Creates a line of frost in front of the mage, 30 yards from end to end. Enemies who cross the line are snared and take damage. The mana cost will be designed to make Wall of Fog efficient against groups, not individuals. This spell is intended to give mages a way to help control the battlefield, whether the mage is damaging incoming enemies (Blizzard can be channeled on top of Wall of Fog) or protecting a flag in a Battleground. 10-second duration. 30-second cooldown.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to introducing new spells, we're planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you're familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

• Arcane Missiles is being redesigned to become a proc-based spell. Whenever the mage does damage with any spell, there is a chance for Arcane Missiles to become available, similar to how the warrior’s Overpower works. The damage and mana cost of this spell will be reworked to make it very desirable to use when available. This change should make gameplay more dynamic for the mage, particularly at low levels.
  
  
• We are planning to remove spells that don't have a clear purpose. Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward, and Frost Ward are being removed from the game, and we may remove more.
  
  
• The ability to conjure food and water will not become available until higher levels (likely around level 40), as we're making changes to ensure mages generally won’t run out of mana at lower levels. Once mages learn how to conjure food and water, the conjured item will restore both health and mana.
  
  
• Scorch will provide a damage bonus to the mage's fire spells. Our goal is for Scorch to be part of the mage's rotation and a useful damage-dealing ability, even if someone else is supplying the group with the spell Critical Strike debuff. Scorch will provide the mage with more specific benefits, which can also be improved through talents.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• Arcane Focus will now return mana for each spell that fails to hit your target, including Arcane Missiles that fail to launch. We want Arcane mages to have several talents that play off of how much mana the character has and give the player enough tools to manage mana.
  
  
• The talent Playing with Fire will reduce the cooldown of Blast Wave when hit by a melee attack, instead of its current effect.
  
  
• Pyromaniac will grant Haste when three or more targets are getting damaged by the effects of your damage-over-time (DoT) fire spells.
  
  
• The Burnout talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Arcane

• Spell damage
• Spell Haste
• Mana Adept

Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.

Fire

• Spell damage
• Spell Crit
• Ignite

Ignite: All direct-damage fire spells will add a damage-over-time (DoT) component when cast. The flavor will be similar to how Fireball works; however, the DoT component will be much stronger.

Frost

• Spell damage
• Spell Crit damage
• Deathfrost

Deathfrost: Casting Frostbolt places a buff on the mage that increases the damage for all frost, fire, and arcane spells. The only damage spell that won't be affected by this buff is Frostbolt.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we’re looking forward to hearing your initial thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

Additional Information

Flame Orb
Flame Orb is not channeled. It may have a cast time, but after that is fire and forget. We want to try the line idea because there aren’t any spells that work that way currently. Giving it a target to follow makes it feel more like a fancy dot – useful perhaps, but nothing that feels really new. It will be balanced for single-target damage, but if you can launch it in such a way that it will hit multiple targets, then you’re just being awesome. (Source)

Wall of Fog
Wall of Fog is not channeled. We don’t know yet how wide it will be, but wide enough so that it feels more like a trip-wire than an area like Frost Trap. (Source)

Hot Streak
We like the basic gameplay of Hot Streak. With lower crit rates all around, we hope that it will feel more like a bonus when it’s up rather than a penalty when it refuses to stay up. We may lower the magnitude overall for the same reason. (Source)

Arcane Missiles
On Arcane Missiles, the basic spell is pretty cool. The problem is the way the spell works makes the current design hard to balance. It’s either too expensive and low damage or the opposite problem. This is particularly true at low level, and meanwhile we think the mage experience at low level is also a little too repetitive. The change is that you can’t hit Arcane Missiles whenever you want. The icon is just grayed out. However, when you deal damage, you have a chance to get Arcane Missiles to light up and then you definitely want to hit it. At higher levels Fire and Frost may eventually phase it out in preference for other spells, or if we like the mechanic, it may be something even Fire and Frost do, just less often than Arcane. (Source)

Mastery Bonuses
On the topic of mastery bonuses, understand that this is a new design for us and very few people have seen them in action yet. We run the risk of specific masteries being so generic that the mastery stat isn’t interesting or so complex that what players really like about playing a certain spec gets turned on its head. This is the kind of thing that will require a lot of iteration and the reason we’re trying to cover the whole gamut of relatively complex to relatively simple to see what feels right. (Source)

Deathfrost
The reason behind Deathfrost (Frost mastery) isn’t to get Frost to spam Frostbolt more. It’s to get mages to spam Frostbolt less. If you hit nothing but Frostbolt, you’re wasting the Deathfrost bonus. (Source)

Food and Water
We’re shifting food and water to higher level because we don’t want players to have so much down time at lower level. We’re not trying to make it harder to level; we’re reducing the need to drink or eat so we’re bumping the actual food and water (though it’s really foodwater in the case of mages) higher. (Source)

Mana Adept
The intent behind Mana Adept (Arcane mastery) is that Arcane currently has a pretty fun mana management game going, at least at relatively high level. We thought it would be fun to extend that concept even further to where Arcane mages that use the mechanics to keep their mana high would do higher dps. I find many of the predictions that Arcane is doomed in PvE based on the very limited information you have at the moment to be quite premature. (Source)

Time Warp vs Bloodlust
On Time Warp vs. Bloodlust, we are really trying to give groups flexibility in who they bring to 10 player raids to an even greater extent than we did in Lich King. We heard over and over that shaman still felt like the one mandatory class in any raid. The more we hear “now there will be no reason to take me over X class / spec” the happier we will be. The reason should be that you’re a good player, not that your mere presence makes everyone else perform better. It’s fun to feel more powerful in a group – we get that, and we aren’t going to completely marginalize group synergy. But it needs to come secondary to the skill of the players involved. (Source)

Fire Ward / Dampen Magic
I understand some mages really like Fire Ward or Dampen Magic. Perhaps “no clear role” wasn’t the best choice of words, but we are trying to remove mechanics from the game that we think aren’t really cutting it. When asking players to put more buttons on their action bars from these new spells, we only think it’s fair to try and get some bar space back from the least interesting spells. Don’t worry so much about balance at this stage. Many things will need to be tweaked. Worry more about whether it ever felt like a fun decision to use these spells. (Source)

Rogue/Mage/Priest Arena Comp
For everyone focusing on the RMP Arena comp, I really think you’re going to see a shift to more PvP concerns in Cataclysm being about Battleground balance. There will still be players playing Arenas for sure, but a lot of the players currently doing Arenas are going to shift to rated BGs instead. (Source)

Healing reduction effects in Cataclysm
"All equivalent debuffs" means if you have the debuff today, you will have it in Cataclysm, but at 20% healing received. To avoid further confusion, we are talking about Mortal Strike, Furious Strikes, Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, Permafrost and Improved Mind Blast.

We are also strongly considering having all of these effect cause the same debuff, called Mortal Wounds, which is a physical effect and therefore undispellable. This allows the behavior to be more consistent regardless of who is applying it and lets us consider things like how easy it should be to dispel poisons (since Mortal Wounds would not be affected).

Heals will be smaller and health pools will be larger in Cataclysm, so we don't expect Mortal Wounds to feel as mandatory as it does today, but this is clearly the kind of thing that will require a lot of playtesting and feedback. (Source)

[Jethro]

Awesome I will get to write a contribution that will actually get read, Ive already written many large diatribes in other posts so give me a few minutes in notepad.

Just to have something positive before the stream of negative and whine

Largely, us/we/mages have been given a pretty damn good deal.

There is little or nothing to whine about not receiving or having removed, they have also given us pretty clear indications of where the Fire and Arcane talent trees will be heading in Cataclysm and a rough idea on where frost is going. The 3 new spells we have been given are all substantial.

Flame orb talented to detonate will be an incredibly interesting, it is a new mechanic really and something that currently will be unique to mages, a lot of potential for fire PVP.

Time Warp well its a no brainer, bring the player not the class demanded someone else get Bloodlust and we got it. The improvement of the movement buff benefits both PVE and PVP allowing us to maximize if we have to quickly reposition while under the effect of an incredibly substantial buff. Specifically in PVP gameplay in once again another powerful tool.

Wall of Fog depending on how its implemented could be potentially one of the most powerful spells in the game, yes once again PVP. We already have an incredibly powerful unique spell in blink and another defensive gap creating CD for all talent specs will be well received in rated battleground gameplay.

Other changes, the big one.
The "HERP DERP ZOMG NO WAI DONT NERF ARCANE YO" Change.

Mana Adept is a great idea, its clearly stated arcane tree WILL BE GIVEN TOOLS TO MANAGE MANA over what baseline abilities we already have. This crying about running low mana and doing "bad damage" is literally coming from BAD players and threatens to remove a potential change that:

A: Gives arcane more depth in its playstyle
B: Sorts out the bads by adding mana management back to arcane.

Because face it, in its current state there is no mana management to arcane and because of its incredible talent bloat, it is a very faceroll spec. Yes bads will cry about losing there "simple" meter topping. Good mages will enjoy 1. being #1 over bads through skill (making most of mana management and movement) <- as it should be 2. having a more interesting experience while raiding.

Arcane Missiles, another great change to an existing spell that will hopefully make it used in all 3 talent specs, another proc to Fire and Frost will be great especially if AM itself talented provides some tangible buff through talents points.

Fire PVP viability, just lump alot of those changes into 1 sections, the haste for dots on multi target and reduction of blastwave (another incredibly strong defensive spell) once gap has been closed are both great. The orb obviously a big fire PVP item, completely viable fire PVP is an incredibly exciting prospect.

Health into spells cant really be commented on until theres more concrete information on the actual amounts used.

Scorch being made useful in terms of pulling its own weight/damage within rotation, providing a selfbuff and raidbuff. Once again how can this change be anything but good? Making scorch (and any other spells treated the same way) more powerful through talents is another step towards depth in gameplay.

Deathfrost is another good mechanic and I hope it has synergy with frostfire bolt, frost has a crit mastery so if it it leans towards crit over haste, frostfire bolt will make alot of sense in frosts line up of spells.

Food/Water fairly self explanatory the intention there.

Loss of FW/FW yes they are being removed with AM/DM, the game either gets balanced without them or healing classes pick up something of equivalence. Taking them out of the game right at this moment would be worthy of complaint. RE-BALANCING without them and planning around them not existing is another thing entirely.

There is more, I might go on with more in another edit.

But the bottom line is, these are just previews.

They have done well by us across the board, new interesting game mechanics, 3 new useful spells and clear information on the direction of both Arcane and Fire.

For me I'm really hoping the PVP Fire viability makes it through Beta, I also look forward to more depth in PVE encounters. The class currently BADLY needs depth in endgame game play and in its role in raiding.

If you want more "2 or 3 button I WIN" and "I dont PVP, these changes suck and so does your game" go to some other class forum and dont ruin these changes for mages, they have the potential to be incredibly exciting.

Anything that makes gameplay more dynamic, give it more depth or is just a unique awesome mechanic is an ace.

I really cant see how we haven't been given anything but aces in our preview.

Mages, The best of the 9 classes previewed so far.

[Geekbustarz]

Boub, the part under Additional Information is misspelled, it says Mana Adapt instead of Mana adept.
(Might be the other way around, i don't have a clue, but 1 of 'em is misspelled ;D)

[Boubouille]

No it's not.

Edit - Really not! (I have no idea if it's adept or adapt tho, changed to adept because it makes more sense)

[Geekbustarz]

It's still misspelled, in the actual info about mana adept. in the first sentence. :
(The intent behind mana adapt )

[Aiphares]

Worry more about whether it ever felt like a fun decision to use these spells.

well it was after seeing a big lavaburst crit reflected to the shamy :P

[Joe Christ]

This is handy. Now I don't need to go digging through a mountain of forum bitching for relevant blue posts.

[Kendeura]

I just realised, arcane mages are going to be sucking up all innervates from druids in the "pro-er" because elsewise they won't be doing their max DPS.
Honestly, I find the arcane mastery ridicolous and not fun at all. It's like, you're going to want to evocate at 60% and waste some of it's effect.

[Tural]

It's still misspelled, in the actual info about mana adept. in the first sentence. :
(The intent behind mana adapt )

GC posted it misspelled. That's why it was misspelled here.

[Aiphares]

I just realised, arcane mages are going to be sucking up all innervates from druids in the "pro-er" because elsewise they won't be doing their max DPS.
Honestly, I find the arcane mastery ridicolous and not fun at all. It's like, you're going to want to evocate at 60% and waste some of it's effect.

you dont know anything about mana regen in cata at all yet, so just be pacient, it will all be good


edit:@jethro Agree!!

[Lumina]

you dont know anything about mana regen in cata at all yet, so just be pacient, it will all be good

PVE arcane changes sound awful :'(
Whatever manaregen will be like (can't keep your mana topped to 100% all the time anyway)
and whatever scaling of Mana Adept will be like (-1% damage @50% mana, or -50% damage @50% mana, whatever)
without chunking tons of innervates you still aren't doing your max dps, so skill would be determined by how skilled
you are in begging druids for innervates :|

@Jethro, I srsly suspect he's just another pvp'er cheering for RMP buffs for arena

[Jethro]

Played since vanilla, raided seriously since BC.

Arcane is the most bored Ive ever been w/ mages in end game content.

Mana Adept will be no different to Molten Fury, Fire is BALANCED around the fact you have the execute ability and will do more damage as the encounter ends.

Arcane WILL BE BALANCED around the fact the damage scales based on mana level.

Just one idea when arcane missile procs a cast for example.


It will be incredibly easy to create a talent, 3 points scaling for improved/empowered arcane missile in the arcane tree, instead of being a flat damage talent.

If all 5 of your arcane missiles cast hit your target - you will gain buff: X manaregen over Y duration.

Rewards good gameplay, matches the direction of the talent tree and punishes bad's who clip their AM cast.

Thats a single dynamic idea that gives arcane mages a skill based mana return.
It would give you another reason to want to make sure you cast arcane missiles everytime it comes up if you have chosen that talent.

What has been previewed can in no way be = to "pve arcane nerf".

[Deleted]

Blizzard is believed that mages are assholes or something (although it is true that the majority should be or maybe have some mental retardation since they love these changes).

Let's see, I am an arcane mage, and the Arcane Missiles are an intrinsic part of my character, why they take it away? To do that mages are the more random class in the world?
So besides that the new powers that they put us are absolute crap (they are expensive, useless and a plagiarism of those other classes), they plunder us and take away our unique spells, but what is this?

Not to mention the masteries:
- Arcane: If you want to do more DPS, you should not spend an ounce of mana (WTF?)
- Frost: Your spells will do more damage, except the main of the frost tree (lol)

But nothing happens; Blizzard's fascists will not move a finger. Why I call them fascists? Because yesterday, without going further, they erased from the official mage forum all the issues of complains about the changes and only let those belonging to the lobotomized Blizzard fans. That is censorship!


In conclusion, a brief summary of the changes of the mages:

- They take away unique powers of our class (Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward and Frost Ward, ...) or transform them in random ones (Arcane Missiles).

- One of the three new spells that they give us is a copy of another class spell (temporal distortion) and the other two are useless and/or expensive (Flame Orb and Wall of Fog).

- Two of the three masteries are obscene (Frost and Arcane).

- Absurd and/or insignificant changes in talents (I think they believe that we are warlocks to our use of life instead of mana).

- And to make matters worse, one of our key features when leveling up (create our own drinks) disappears when we need it more (at low levels).


Still I do not understand how and why the lobotomized fans of Blizzard can support such nonsense ... I never will understand it ... These changes seem to be invented by a group of drunks...

[shamblingswarm]

Arcane Missiles, another great change to an existing spell that will hopefully make it used in all 3 talent specs, another proc to Fire and Frost will be great especially if AM itself talented provides some tangible buff through talents points.

I just lol'ed arcane has 2 spells only 3 with Abarr (only used when moving) and with that we just lost one of our tools (and yes we lost it unless the procs are even higher than what they are now) and for what so can fire can use it??? fire already has more than what they needed and frost well frost isn't for pve anyways only the bad's use it. How many times i have to spam more than 4 times AB to get a proc of AM and i know im not the only one that has to do it, AM being a proc only now will only make things worse for arcane unless they give arcane more tools for damage spells.So far with all the cata previews for mage's in not really impressed Time Warp sure is a welcome addition but not needed and i do get that other classes needed BL and mage's seem like the best option. TBH All classes got crap most of them got revamped spells from other classes only a few things are completly new.

[Xentropy]

What has been previewed can in no way be = to "pve arcane nerf".

While this is true, and those posting that this will automatically make arcane underpowered are also missing the point, you might be missing some of the point as well. I'm going to repost something I posted over on the Elitist Jerks forums, since I can't think of a better way of putting it than I already did:

"The main issue I see with Mana Adept is it will be very difficult to design it so it feels like a bonus instead of a penalty. That is: So that the max damage bonus doesn't feel like what our "normal" damage should be and the damage we're doing with lower amounts of mana a reduced amount. At what level of mana pool will we be "balanced"? Will we be forced to have over 50% mana at all times or risk falling below other classes and specs? Or will, say, 20-80% mana do the same damage as everyone else, 80%+ more, and 20%- less? It will be a very difficult sweet spot for Blizzard to hit. The wider the "normal damage" midrange, the easier to balance, but the more lackluster the mastery would feel since it's rarely in play, and the narrower the midrange, the more difficult to balance (and the more likely "normal" needs to be weighted nearer a full mana pool to avoid arcane being overpowered in shorter fights, bringing us back to it feeling like a penalty rather than a bonus).

I'm glad our masteries didn't turn out as boring as the warlock ones; I feared something like theirs with just increased damage by x% to the proper school. But arcane's in particular will be a tough thing to balance properly. I eagerly await the initial values from beta and where they end up over time."

In short, it will be VERY difficult to balance Mana Adept. Not impossible, but difficult. It will most likely result in arcane being considered more trouble than it is worth, because if it's not extremely difficult to benefit from the mastery, it will be overpowered. Basically, either you have to work a lot harder than a fire mage to do the same dps, or those who do work hard (or fall on crutches like outside help--chain innervates and the like) do more dps and are considered overpowered. The balance may shift between those two as the beta (and the entire expansion after that) wears on, but there's really no sweet spot between them. Either they set the balance point, as they do with Molten Fury, so that a perfectly played arcane mage does the same dps as a perfectly played fire mage (despite the fire mage's skill cap being far lower), or they set the balance point so that skilled arcane mages can do more dps, and either it's not enough more to be worth the trouble for 99% of the mage population, making arcane underutilized, or it's enough more that people will link the meters of these ridiculous arcane mages doing 10% more dps than the next highest spec in the game and the nerfbat will likely come shortly thereafter.

[Jethro]

The posts from shamblingswarm and Northem are exactly what Ive already talked about, people with no idea who have played nothing but arcane spec since TOC. Xentropys post just got posted as im posting this and I'll read it in a minute it at least seems from first glance to be well written by someone with a clue.

But this is at those bads above his post.

People seem to think these changes are just rolling out literally in the next patch, only the changes listed and they will just go straight over the top of what we have.

What part of, the entire class is being re-balanced don't people understand.

Blizzard explained the logic as to why low level water/food is being removed and this rocket scientist posts whining that we "NEED IT MORE AT LOW LEVELS" even though blizzard already wrote "WE ARE CHANGING MANA/HP REGENERATION MECHANIC AT LOW LEVELS SO FOOD/WATER ISN'T NEEDED"

^GENIUS
Didn't even bother reading the logic behind the change, just whined about it, what a pro.

2 Whine responses about arcane from 2 self proclaimed "arcane mages" what a joke, let me guess u guys with all that experience '"RAIDING SERIOUSLY" since leveled a mage for TOC when it was discovered arcane became faceroll due to talent bloat, lack of mana management and short encounter length decided to jump on the bandwagon.

"Frost is for bads, its bad DPS"
/FACEDESK the idea is they rebalance the game and make frost viable in cataclysm, its not about how the game is now, seriously. <- World of Warcraft Cataclysm PREVIEW

Not talents and spells to be patched in next week.

How many times i have to spam more than 4 times AB to get a proc of AM and i know im not the only one that has to do it,

Holy crap you are BAD, clear the debuff with arcane barrage or arcane missiles w/ out Mbar proc.
With game play that BAD you arent in a position to judge future changes to the class.
ITS NOT EVEN AN "AM PROC" IS A MBAR PROC, JUST SO MUCH BAD.

This guy is the prime example of clueless bad who has no idea but just fumbles through because of the sheer simplicity of arcane and now sees fit to whine about changes.

Just wow.

[Koltak]

Blizzard is believed that mages are assholes or something (although it is true that the majority should be or maybe have some mental retardation since they love these changes).

Let's see, I am an arcane mage, and the Arcane Missiles are an intrinsic part of my character, why they take it away? To do that mages are the more random class in the world?
So besides that the new powers that they put us are absolute crap (they are expensive, useless and a plagiarism of those other classes), they plunder us and take away our unique spells, but what is this?

Not to mention the masteries:
- Arcane: If you want to do more DPS, you should not spend an ounce of mana (WTF?)
- Frost: Your spells will do more damage, except the main of the frost tree (lol)

But nothing happens; Blizzard's fascists will not move a finger. Why I call them fascists? Because yesterday, without going further, they erased from the official mage forum all the issues of complains about the changes and only let those belonging to the lobotomized Blizzard fans. That is censorship!


In conclusion, a brief summary of the changes of the mages:

- They take away unique powers of our class (Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward and Frost Ward, ...) or transform them in random ones (Arcane Missiles).

- One of the three new spells that they give us is a copy of another class spell (temporal distortion) and the other two are useless and/or expensive (Flame Orb and Wall of Fog).

- Two of the three masteries are obscene (Frost and Arcane).

- Absurd and/or insignificant changes in talents (I think they believe that we are warlocks to our use of life instead of mana).

- And to make matters worse, one of our key features when leveling up (create our own drinks) disappears when we need it more (at low levels).


Still I do not understand how and why the lobotomized fans of Blizzard can support such nonsense ... I never will understand it ... These changes seem to be invented by a group of drunks...

I just can't agree with your post:
- Two of the three masteries are obscene (Frost and Arcane).
Frost Mastery:
It takes away some of the pain when nothing procs. Imagine it: Deep Freeze is ready, but no Fingers of Frost proc. Now you're spamming Frostbolt until it finally procs. Now that spell makes more damage, what pays of for the time, you had to wait for it.

Arcane Mastery:
It's clear, that this won't work with how the Arcane tree currently works. But if you read the whole post, they stated, that there will be much more tools to regain mana. So, arcane could become the hardest tree to master and that would be really cool.

- And to make matters worse, one of our key features when leveling up (create our own drinks) disappears when we need it more (at low levels).
Read the blue post:
We’re shifting food and water to higher level because we don’t want players to have so much down time at lower level. We’re not trying to make it harder to level; we’re reducing the need to drink or eat so we’re bumping the actual food and water (though it’s really foodwater in the case of mages) higher.
-> no problem with mana.

- One of the three new spells that they give us is a copy of another class spell (temporal distortion) and the other two are useless and/or expensive (Flame Orb and Wall of Fog).
Well, you can argue with our new "bloodlust", if we deserve it or not and so on, but the point is: It is a cool ability and I'm really glad, that I can bring my own raidwide haste buff.
Flame orb should be far from being useless, if talented for it, it should be a standard spell in the fire rotation. That means more diverity for this tree even with less Hot Streak procs.
Wall of Fog is clearly a PvP talent, making it more of an (really cool) utility tool. But if implemented right, it could make AoE-trash in raids a lot less boring.

- They take away unique powers of our class (Amplify Magic, Dampen Magic, Fire Ward and Frost Ward, ...) or transform them in random ones (Arcane Missiles).
I partially agree with this point, but I think, those spells don't really have much utility. For example: The only time I ever used Amplify Magic was on Valithria Dreamwalker. Thats one boss out of all WotLK bosses, where it's useful. And there will be talents to pay off for this.
As for the Arcane Missiles: Again, in the current arcane tree, this is a really awful change, but they hinted that there will be talents to pay off for that. In addition, I would really love to cast a non-fire/non-frost spell while specced fire/frost, so it will make our rotations a bit more fun.

- Absurd and/or insignificant changes in talents (I think they believe that we are warlocks to our use of life instead of mana).
Well, that has to be proven. From my point of view, these changes sound promising. Before flaming about those in general, you should think of situations, where they could be useful. After all, they sound for me like utility talents (it was said, that you will have a few talent points left after speccing the mandatory talents), that can be used if you wanted them, or not if you like other talents more.

[Jethro]

Reply to Xentropy.

While I played fire early WOTLK I have played with a mage who was arcane from the buff during tier7 content all the way through to TOGC. He successfully I will add played arcane when it did have a harsh mana management regime and managed to do in some cases as you say 10% more damage than any other class/spec could.

So what you describe has already been seen in WOTLK and I know there is more than just this mage I played w/ personally that has been a PROPER arcane mage and used it while it was actually UNFORGIVING and challenging to play.

Realistically I have no problem with arcane being "overpowered" if that has to be the case, provided it is at the expense of being difficult to play.

Would it be that bad playing both specs depending on encounter? To me its 100x more interesting than arcane being skillless faceroll.

However blizzard seem confident that they will be able to provide the arcane tree with the tools necessary to make mana management a gameplay mechanic itself. I try and see it closer to the druid change to "balance" making it a true balance.

Giving arcane mages their own "balance".

Applying "mana adept" to arcane as it is tomorrow, is a pve nerf.

Completely changing arcane around mana adept is another story, build the game play around the mastery not shove the square mastery into the round hole.

Im seeing it from a building around it perspective, not this is arcane balanced around every other class, lets throw the nerf/buff mastery on it and give it a whirl. If its done like that there is literally no way it will work.

Bottom line is until we see numbers, there no answer.

But bads crying about Arcane PVE being completely nonviable based on nothing (all thats available to go on atm) aren't needed and should be flamed, the last thing we need is bads literally getting ideas removed before there's even been a chance to see them.

[Jethro]

@Koltak it's good you posted that in actual points against his (northem) "argument" but it's a waste of time.

I can guarantee he hasn't even played in the frost tree once, can't read, probably thinks fingers of frost is an ice-block kept in a deep freeze at your local walmart.

The kicker is when he starts going on about things being too expensive, hes been given a super special preview obviously because Ive seen nowhere any posts by blues on mana costs of anything spoken about in this preview.

The loss of a few spells, really just get over it, im sure Northem here probably has 1-6 bound and is the "best mage on his server".

I have the best part of the entire left side, every single key on that side of an MS ergonomic keyboard bound with Shift and Ctrl modifiers as well, I had another expert mage in game tell me how he "only needs 3 or 4 keys" yea I wish I was that good...

Cleaning up our binds is actually another incredibly welcome change.

[Kendeura]

The posts from shamblingswarm and Northem are exactly what Ive already talked about, people with no idea who have played nothing but arcane spec since TOC. Xentropys post just got posted as im posting this and I'll read it in a minute it at least seems from first glance to be well written by someone with a clue.

But this is at those bads above his post.

People seem to think these changes are just rolling out literally in the next patch, only the changes listed and they will just go straight over the top of what we have.

What part of, the entire class is being re-balanced don't people understand.

Blizzard explained the logic as to why low level water/food is being removed and this rocket scientist posts whining that we "NEED IT MORE AT LOW LEVELS" even though blizzard already wrote "WE ARE CHANGING MANA/HP REGENERATION MECHANIC AT LOW LEVELS SO FOOD/WATER ISN'T NEEDED"

^GENIUS
Didn't even bother reading the logic behind the change, just whined about it, what a pro.

2 Whine responses about arcane from 2 self proclaimed "arcane mages" what a joke, let me guess u guys with all that experience '"RAIDING SERIOUSLY" since leveled a mage for TOC when it was discovered arcane became faceroll due to talent bloat, lack of mana management and short encounter length decided to jump on the bandwagon.

"Frost is for bads, its bad DPS"
/FACEDESK the idea is they rebalance the game and make frost viable in cataclysm, its not about how the game is now, seriously. <- World of Warcraft Cataclysm PREVIEW

Not talents and spells to be patched in next week.
Holy crap you are BAD, clear the debuff with arcane barrage or arcane missiles w/ out Mbar proc.
With game play that BAD you arent in a position to judge future changes to the class.
ITS NOT EVEN AN "AM PROC" IS A MBAR PROC, JUST SO MUCH BAD.

This guy is the prime example of clueless bad who has no idea but just fumbles through because of the sheer simplicity of arcane and now sees fit to whine about changes.

Just wow.

I find it hilarious you are calling people bad when you are saying to clear AB stacks with a barrage. Good job. /sarcasm