Mage - Cataclysm Preview Compilation

[xalenthas]

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

Except: He actually said Arcane Barrage OR Arcane Missiles ...

You suddenly need to run and the stack will be lost you WILL cast a Barrage

[Jethro]

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

Ok champ, I cannot re-adjust my position and cast barrage while doing so to clear an AB stack, I will remember that thanks chief.

I will in the future.

A. Spam arcane blast, way to burn DPM
B. Only clear it with arcane missile, move after and cast arcane barrage while moving.

NO WAI PEOPLE STRAFE LEFT/RIGHT TO REPOSITION? I JUST SPAM 1111111 ON THE SPOT TILL MBAR PROCS YO.

[Kendeura]

The exception doesn't make the rule.

[circles]

Trying to make strict guidelines to follow for spec that requires a bit of situational awareness of what spell to use at certain situations is dumb. Ablastx4 then cast MBar, if MBar hasn't procced cast 'x'. 'x' depends on how much mana you have, what cds are up, what cds have been used, whether you have to move, specific boss mechanics...etc

Anyways OT, i like most of the ideas Blizzard have come up with, I just hope they implement them well.

Plz don't remove my ward spells. I like my fire/frost wards :'(

[flinchy]

@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.

lolwhat?
me:
1 - AM
2- AB
3- PoM
4- cooldown popping macro
5 - Ice Block

others: misc aoe macro's, spellsteal, that's all.
and yeah i dont have trouble doing excellent DPS either, so the fact you allegedly have this multitude of binds just means you're trying to overcomplicate the class.

[circles]

lolwhat?
me:
1 - AM
2- AB
3- PoM
4- cooldown popping macro
5 - Ice Block

others: misc aoe macro's, spellsteal, that's all.
and yeah i dont have trouble doing excellent DPS either, so the fact you allegedly have this multitude of binds just means you're trying to overcomplicate the class.

mana gem
evo
frost/fire ward
invis (during PP teargas)
Abar (on the move)
sheep (cc MC targets no way)
cs (interupts no way)
spellsteal
aoe's
^not everything

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying removing wards to clear up space on action bars is a valid statement from anyone, especially you Blizz (removing spells doesn't make playing a class more fun).
However there is more to a mage than spamming damage 100% of the time, there are other things mages should do (I'm not even going to touch on pvp, because only having those 5 buttons would be retarded). Utility isn't just buffs, it's actually you know utilising abilities to make a raid go smoother.

Either way these are early changes don't get too upset just yet.

[Bikni]

- Frost: Your spells will do more damage, except the main of the frost tree (lol)

Im pretty sure Frostfirebolt will be the main nuke for frost pve, and if you think about it its very a very smart change, they bring frost into raid viable dps (hopefully) without overpowering frostbolt.

[flinchy]

mana gem
evo
frost/fire ward
invis (during PP teargas)
Abar (on the move)
sheep (cc MC targets no way)
cs (interupts no way)
spellsteal
aoe's
^not everything

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying removing wards to clear up space on action bars is a valid statement from anyone, especially you Blizz (removing spells does make playing a class more fun).
However there is more to a mage than spamming damage 100% of the time, there are other things mages should do (I'm not even going to touch on pvp, because only having those 5 buttons would be retarded). Utility isn't just buffs, it's actually you know utilising abilities to make a raid go smoother.

Either way these are early changes don't get too upset just yet.

those are for very specific fights and can be VERY EASILY rotated in and out of the action bar (i keep mine on action bar 2 and 3 and move them to 1 when the fight demands it)

the only fights i ever need to gem/evocate on are the really long ones where theres a big enough gap for clicking anyway (like sindra and the ice blocks)

[Armnhammah]

I think what Blizz is trying to do is:

a) Make mage rotations more than a simple 2 button faceroll (you can see this with deathfrost, scorch, and adept changes)
b) Make each of the trees viable for raiding, but make one tree the most viable. For me its obvious that Fire will once again be the spec of choice.

I don't think it's a bad change to arcane, just different. I'm pretty sure that the dmg coefficients for 100% mana will be ridiculous (like what 4x stacked arcane blast is right now), so that as you go down, it becomes more and more like what kind of damage you are supposed to do (1x stack). People have to think while playing arcane, which is what happened before arcane missiles became free with missile barrage.

Also, the arcane missile change isn't that big of a deal. It's already a proc based spell. If you need to reset your stacks in cata, and you dont have arcane missiles, just do a barrage and start again.

[Deleted]

Im pretty sure Frostfirebolt will be the main nuke for frost pve, and if you think about it its very a very smart change, they bring frost into raid viable dps (hopefully) without overpowering frostbolt.

Frost will be funny and rotation might depend on how much mastery the mage have. You will want to cast as many Frostbolt as possible to get a huge Deep Freeze/Icelance combo, but on the other hand, alternating Frostfirebolt and Frost bolt will be the highest output when DF is on cd.

[monkeybread]

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...

Do you really think their going to gimp arc mage dps if you are really low on mana? That

would hurt our chances getting in on longer fights where we know that were not gonna be

over 50% for ever. I am looking at it like an extra reward for mana management, those

who know how to keep up their mana using various tricks and such but won't gimp newbies

who don't have as much knowledge about managing their mana. I would bet this is more of

a little buff than any type of nerf.





Lets take an example, if it is a sort of "buff" and lets say at 50% or lower you lose the

buff, that would mean every second your mana is above 50% your doing more damage

that you ever would without this so called buff. Its not like their going to nerf our damage

then add this extremely hard to manage buff to even it all out. I can see how people are

getting confused and upset about it but if you take the time to think out what they are

doing it sounds alot like they way they are doing the whole warrior/rage being channelled

into extra damage type of thing. That there is an example of the whole rage management

as a buff and this is a mana management type of buff. So before everyone screams were

gonna be sucking up all the innervates, (although top guilds may set up a rotation for

that) i don't think the damage increase is gonna be a huge change to where were gonna

see this happening left and right.

[Aoiri]

as the poster said before me plus as stated there will be a talent for mana back if a spell misses (which if hit capped should not miss ) or if am ticks don't fire. so if you cast am an move after first missle who is to say you don't receive mana back. you will have to wait an see but by reading the master adept you can see that it will be buffed then realign back to normal dps as ur mana lowers. not you are normal an ur dps will just go down. I like the changes they are making and i will take the bad w/ the good. change and adapt otherwise who would hit the same spells for 5 yrs in a row. not i.

[Bikni]

Frost will be funny and rotation might depend on how much mastery the mage have. You will want to cast as many Frostbolt as possible to get a huge Deep Freeze/Icelance combo, but on the other hand, alternating Frostfirebolt and Frost bolt will be the highest output when DF is on cd.

I think thats why they were trying to work on an internal cd for FFB proc deep freeze, so it would be main nuke for frost. they will prob try to bring that back, otherwise it will be a waist to talent frostbolt and can hurt the dmg output of the spec

[circles]

Do you really think their going to gimp arc mage dps if you are really low on mana? That

would hurt our chances getting in on longer fights where we know that were not gonna be

over 50% for ever. I am looking at it like an extra reward for mana management, those

who know how to keep up their mana using various tricks and such but won't gimp newbies

who don't have as much knowledge about managing their mana. I would bet this is more of

a little buff than any type of nerf.





Lets take an example, if it is a sort of "buff" and lets say at 50% or lower you lose the

buff, that would mean every second your mana is above 50% your doing more damage

that you ever would without this so called buff. Its not like their going to nerf our damage

then add this extremely hard to manage buff to even it all out. I can see how people are

getting confused and upset about it but if you take the time to think out what they are

doing it sounds alot like they way they are doing the whole warrior/rage being channelled

into extra damage type of thing. That there is an example of the whole rage management

as a buff and this is a mana management type of buff. So before everyone screams were

gonna be sucking up all the innervates, (although top guilds may set up a rotation for

that) i don't think the damage increase is gonna be a huge change to where were gonna

see this happening left and right.

The problem is arcane WILL have it's damage balanced around being able to maintain high amounts of mana. So having lower than 50% mana will feel liked gimped damage.

On the otherhand if the bonus is too small an amount to be worried about, then what's the point of having the mechanic at all if managing mana doesn't really give any noticeable gain. May as well have a boring "does increased x% increased arcane dmg".

Having a talent that gives mana back when you miss a spell seems stupid imo, trading all of the damage on a spell for a bit of mana return doesn't seem like a worthwhile trade off. You should be hit capped for raiding as you want all your damage to damage the target (omigod rly? no way). In pvp the idea is even worse (miss on a counterspell/poly/killing blow).

Imo a mechanic like "Casting an arcane spell creates a stacking debuff (up to five stacks) on the target, when the target is hit by Arcane Barrage the target explodes in a burst of arcane energy dealing 'X' damage to targets in 5-10yards" could be interesting.
Sort of like a cross between RotD and that ability Xevozz from VH does. This way mages have a reason to cast Abar besides having a free gcd while they're moving and (depending on the damage it does) a bit of aoe utility that is unique to the spec.

[Larwood]

those are for very specific fights and can be VERY EASILY rotated in and out of the action bar (i keep mine on action bar 2 and 3 and move them to 1 when the fight demands it)

Yeah, because rotating them in is a lot quicker and easier than having them ready to use at all times ???

the only fights i ever need to gem/evocate on are the really long ones where theres a big enough gap for clicking anyway (like sindra and the ice blocks)

Therefore you aren't maximising your dps because you can't be bothered. Does that make you a bad? I think it does.

[gossen83]

TS your conclusions scream lack of end-game raiding. Mages, the most fragile, dependant on healers fast reactions, unforgiving, and currently dependant on not less than THREE other classes bringing various raidbuffs to maximize our damage will now scream and require yet another class to maximize our damage, trees tossing us innervates. Hopefully mages out there are so loved by their guildies (espec restodruids with hots being the most frustrated healers seing the mages get 2 shotted by bloodwhirls) so far in wotlk for their unique raidutility, ability to perform multiple rogles, ability to take huge amounts of damage before requiring healer-attention, that restodruids will happily stop putting all focus on healing but rather starting keeping an eye on mages manapool....

[Swizzle]

for one thing, let me just say this: WE DO NOT KNOW HOW MANA REGENERATION WILL BE IN CATACLYSM.

evocate may be changed, along with gems. maybe arcane will focus on using mage armor (something people have been asking for for a while now), who knows. not us.

in other news, i just counted my keybindings for PvE: 38 for both fire and arcane.

[flinchy]

for one thing, let me just say this: WE DO NOT KNOW HOW MANA REGENERATION WILL BE IN CATACLYSM.

evocate may be changed, along with gems. maybe arcane will focus on using mage armor (something people have been asking for for a while now), who knows. not us.

in other news, i just counted my keybindings for PvE: 38 for both fire and arcane.

this ^

if the damage buff from the arcane mastery is truly that great
why wouldn't it be possible for there to be a talent that boosts mage armor, and makes it mandatory over molten
ie, without mage armor you wont have the regen (or something) to use it to the full potential.

i like it!

[Lightcaller]

Looks like the mages will get more fun spells to use ;D Thats why i like playing my mage 8)

[Deleted]

for one thing, let me just say this: WE DO NOT KNOW HOW MANA REGENERATION WILL BE IN CATACLYSM.

evocate may be changed, along with gems. maybe arcane will focus on using mage armor (something people have been asking for for a while now), who knows. not us.

True, but judging by the info from the devs so far it will be harder, not easyer to sustain a manapool in Cataclysm.


Someone had a good post on us forums about Mana Adept. To balance out this mechanic you will need to do about the same plus dmg at 100% mana, as you do minus dmg at 0% mana. That is if you go from full to oom directly, in the periode of a combat. The moment you add in Innervates, mana pots and so on, the spec will either do to much dmg compared to the other specs, or it will need to be balance around having theese extra tools. Which means a Mage who dont use mana tools as a dps enhancer will perfomr subpar. This will cause problems if Mana as stated, will be a rescource to worry about in Cataclysm. On the other hand, if you add to many tools to get mana back, it would just make the spec feels like a active energy system (rogue, druid,hunter) , which again prolly will cause a fuzz; "why do i have to constantly manage this rescource when other specs gets a refill automatical."

The bigget problem with the mechanic is not really balance issues imo. Its the sheer unfun`ness in constantly moving away from max possible dmg. Every time you cast a spell you are gimping yourself - it will overshadow the interesting aspect off any mana jugling mechanic, that the more you work, the worse will you perform. A player will just se that his first spel does 10k, the next 9k, the next 8k- and that he have to blow extra rescources to get back to "full dmg" again. You can argue that it dosnt matter when the dmg is high, as long as it is high sometimes - but the fact is that the one casting the spell constantly will se his dmg going down - leaving a feel of "getting tired" on the gameplay.

The stacking of Arcane Blasts for more dmg - if they keep this mechanic, will allso feels akward since Mana Adept will make the spell pay a bigger and bigger dmg penalty. They will have to rework this -imo very well working-mechanic, which they havent had to do with a more conventionel mastery.

Ive mentioned before that Mana Adept - imo- would be more satisfying if its is build upon a on/*off Arcane Power. A mastery increased power mode, where you pay extra mana for extra dmg - it will still get cheesed by outside manasources, but at least it will feels more like the Mage choose to inject more power into his spell, and he have better control with Mana Adept.