Mage - Cataclysm Preview Compilation

[Alanthall]

Well, first of all, anyone who knows me knows that when I talk about the meta game, I refer to pvp only. Pve never has and never will be a skillset part of this game. You show up, faceroll your class, and win. Either you learn the scripted fights and profit, or you don't learn the scripted fights and you don't profit.


As far as mana management goes, in pve it is a no brainer, why do we even have a mana bar?

In pvp, mana is a hard thing to come by. Doesn't matter what spec you play, during arena you will be OOM at least once. While other dps classes sit there and have no shortage of resources, whether your a rogue/druid with energy resources that refil within second, a warrior who builds rage as long as you're in combat, or a DK who only needs runes to finish an extremely short CD in order to keep beating shit down, you will never know how badly mages need mana.

Sure, I could dps down a lot of people before going OOM, but dpsing isn't why ppl choose mages in pvp. They take mages because of un paralleled CC and surivability. Neither of which is possible when you are OOM because a fight lasts far longer than it should, or you just happened to get paired up against a priest who likes to mana burn you everytime he is in LoS.

I agree that people who can't manage their mana in pve should /uninstall, but I am not talking about pve, and pve is not a good frame of reference for any degree of skill, no matter what class you play.

What I am talking about, is being lumped into the same category as other classes who never have to worry about resource management. I mean seriously, when was the last time you heard a warrior complaining about his rage management CDs? Never. Especially in pvp.

When was the last time you heard a rogue complaining that he couldn't do anything because he was out of energy?

When was the last time you heard a DK complaining because all his runes were on CD and he couldn't get out of combat to drink? Never. Even other casters don't have mana issues like mages. I am not the only one who feels this way, so please take your personal attacks and visit your local homeless shelter.


I took the mana adept changes, and looked at them for what they are: another way to penalize mages because of their mana. If I am at 100% mana now, I do the same damage as I would at 25% mana, regardless of spec, gear, ect. But I guess in Cata I will do MORE dps when at 100%, and less dps when I am below 100%. In other words, after the first cast in a fight, my dps will start to dwindle, until I can use stuff like mana gem, potions, and evocate to get my mana back up. Well, I hate to say it, but doing 'more' dps doesn't mean a thing when the majority of the time I will be doing 'less dps' because my mana pool is shrinking with every cast.

If you don't understand why being penalized for having less mana is a bad thing, you shouldn't be playing a mana based class in the first place.

Lemme put it to you this way: you play a Rogue. Whenever you are at less than 100% energy, you will do less than your maximum damage. Does that still seem appealing? How about this: you play a DK and whenever you have a rune on CD or have runic power built up, you will do less dps than when you have no runic power or runes on CD.


This idea is so damn useless that I almost want to fire every one of their creative design team. This coming from the same R&D that thinks a magic mushroom is ideal for the druid class....

Quite honestly im terrible at PvP. Although you complain about being the only class that has to worry about Mana currently You have no clue what the future holds for the other classes as far as mana goes that have to use it. As they have stated many times they are adding things into the game for healers and such as far as mana goes. The healers will actually start to go OOM for once. So the argument about mages being the only class that have to pay attention to their mana only really applies to how current game mechanics work. People need to stop assuming that this or that is going to happen thinking and saying "MAGES ARE JUST GETTING GIMPED BECAUSE BLIZZARD HATES US"

[admrilpopandfresh]

in terms of mana adept this what i think it is:
(lets say they added it this week the game)
you will be doing the same dps as you are now,but when at 100% mana you will get a bonus to dmg. and as your mana is consumed you will slowly lose that bonus. lets say you are at 50% mana, then you will have 50% of the possible bonus dmg that you can get.

i dont know if this is the way it was meant to be, but in my eyes this is what makes the most sense w/o completely killing this spec.

[Nirual]

In other words, after the first cast in a fight, my dps will start to dwindle, until I can use stuff like mana gem, potions, and evocate to get my mana back up. Well, I hate to say it, but doing 'more' dps doesn't mean a thing when the majority of the time I will be doing 'less dps' because my mana pool is shrinking with every cast

Why do you automatically assume the system will be balanced around your dps at 100% mana? That's as if saying arcane should be based around arcane power being up. Mana Adept doesn't mean your substained dps will suck. It just means you'll have to choose between an efficient longterm dps or burning down something with everything you have and risk your dps suffering if the fight drags on with you sitting at like 20% mana and your dps reduced by, lets say, 20% until evocation is ready again.

[coolcatchris]

it's really simple guys, arcane will burst like a beast (more than it does now) and it will peter out slowly. it's really not hard to understand.

[mykolas5b]

I think you all are missing out 1 point here: mastery is a stat. Thus when you have 0 mastery it would be, let's say, 75%dmg at 50% mana and 100%dmg at 100% mana. When you lvl and replace your gear with +mastery ones dmg will go up like 100%dmg at 50% mana and 125%dmg at 100% mana.

[jandrath]

•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.

Not for this who wants to cast arcane missiles if your fire spec that does not benifit from talents (scaling). In the beginning it might be cool but later on this will blow for any spec that is not arcane from no scaling from talents.

•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.

I use these spells all the time in pvp and pve.
Say there is a demo lock and he is about to cast immolate i use fire ward or a frost mage about to cast frostbolt i use frostward. Yet another way to make all classes the same. Against it!!

The rest of changes i like just not those two.

[Deleted]

•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.

I use these spells all the time in pvp and pve.
Say there is a demo lock and he is about to cast immolate i use fire ward or a frost mage about to cast frostbolt i use frostward. Yet another way to make all classes the same. Against it!!

The rest of changes i like just not those two.

I agree here. For me its one of the most important tools in pvp. How on earth did they come up with "no clear purpose" is beyond me. If they think this is useless then plz remove war's spell reflect or dk's ams or priests shields etc......

[Skarrd]

I agree here. For me its one of the most important tools in pvp. How on earth did they come up with "no clear purpose" is beyond me. If they think this is useless then plz remove war's spell reflect or dk's ams or priests shields etc......

Priest shields, na, spell reflect I'll give you some similarity points. Did they remove shadow ward? They better have.

[Garlic]

I agree here. For me its one of the most important tools in pvp. How on earth did they come up with "no clear purpose" is beyond me. If they think this is useless then plz remove war's spell reflect or dk's ams or priests shields etc......

Dose Frost ward also stops the DK's spell stop b/c it is frost?

[Swizzle]

Dose Frost ward also stops the DK's spell stop b/c it is frost?

yes, and if you have the glyph you can spell reflect chains of ice.

[Garlic]

yes, and if you have the glyph you can spell reflect chains of ice.

Wow seems like a hit to me, might not be the junk but the shin has feelings too.

[Deleted]

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

Sorry but, you are so fucking retarded! Am I right? How can you say that? You must be drugged or even worse ..

USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST

[jandrath]

As a mage i find dks one of the hardest melee to go against. They have lots of ways to kill mages. Anti magic shield, Anti-magic zone, Icebound Fortitude, Death grip, Chains of ice and the fact they can silence us from far away (Strangulate), pet ghoul which can stun you, gargoyle bombards you. there deathcoil and icy touch which they can just spam at you when there not even close to you. If they have four piece pvp gear they build up runic power by being slowed. Might just be me but i think dks have a fair chance against a mage.

the gyph is only 5% chance to reflect spells not very much to count on

[Deleted]

As a mage i find dks one of the hardest melee to go against. They have lots of ways to kill mages. Anti magic shield, Anti-magic zone, Icebound Fortitude, Death grip, Chains of ice and the fact they can silence us from far away (Strangulate), pet ghoul which can stun you, gargoyle bombards you. there deathcoil and icy touch which they can just spam at you when there not even close to you. If they have four piece pvp gear they build up runic power by being slowed. Might just be me but i think dks have a fair chance against a mage.

the gyph is only 5% chance to reflect spells not very much to count on

Go Fire then ;D 35% reflect chance, yes plz

[Deleted]

Currently Frost-Mages have the following strong-points in PvP:

-Time Warp / Heroism / Bloodlust
-Wall of Fog
-Sheep
-Counter-Spell
-Mortal Strike Debuff
-Snares in form of Shatter-Barrier, Deep-Freeze, Frost-Nova, Pet-Nova, Frostbite proccs (both Pet and regular FB casts)
-Mage Armour
-Very durable with Glyph of Shatter-Barrier
-Strong Damage (that requires setting-up though)

Now I don't generally QQ but based on my experience that is a whole lot of PvP utility packed into one class (specc). No other class has anything near that many strong points. While there are weaknesses, I do think they are out-weighed by the strengths.

Here is what I would like to see for Cata:

-Frostbite removed (less RNG ftw!)
-MS Effect removed from Permafrost and added to Frostbite (or removed completely)
-Shatter-Barrier Glyph changed to make it immune to dispels instead of boosting its absorb amount(if that's a nerf or a buff depends on your pov)
-Mage Armour reduces Magic effects by 30%, not 50%.

Even with those changed Mages would still be left with a whole lot of utility.

But we'll have to wait for Beta to get some decent perceptions.

[funkyskunky]

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

This will probobly differ between classes (ie compare the hunter mana change and the likely paladin mana change), and the statement was more so directed towards todays (again paladin :P) healers and not tomorrows arcane mages.

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."

I do not see a reason for the absolute values of the extremes to be equal, as any other supposed 0% bonus point than around 50% mana would just be a nerf or buff relative to other classes (and is really dependant on the level, means and burstyness of mana regen), nor that the curve is linear (I will get to that later).

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.

The "getting tired" gamplay seems to assume that no other procs will occur and/or that a mage will never reach 100% mana towards the end of the fight, or multiple times during a fight, and/or that peaks in amount of mana will not be coupled with procs, buffs or other CDs to ultimately yield more burst than the first spell even if that is the only sane time that level of mana will be reached.

The Arcane Blasts "debuff" if it remains would have a lot of potential if a significant mana gain can be incorporated before a spell is unleashed, ie x stacks for y% more damage coupled with a mana gain effectively giving an additional z% damage .

Innervate in its current state with the common preconception of how Mana Adept will work could be seen as problematic, but let me point out that Hysteria/ToT/Power Infusion does not have too many complaints attached to it at the moment, perhaps because it can be given with benefit to a few classes rather than only one spec benefitting DPS-wise from another player's CD. It may not be feasible to waste innervate on a DPS.

If the mana to damage modifier ratio does not change linearly, the mastery would make "significant" mana gains effectively CDs if from ca. 85-100% has a low(er) conversion rate. Tiers of modifiers could be another direction developers could opt with.

All in all the arcane tree has incredible potential and will hopefully be challanging to play and theorycraft with some visible rewards.

---------- Post added 2010-07-21 at 09:33 AM ----------

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.

I do not want to point any fingers towards pointers pointing at pointers who miss points, nor do I want to make points missing the points of other pointers and point-makers, nor point attention to erronous points, but I will try to bring some points to the point of the discussion, and would be happy if the points I make that miss the point are pointed out by keen finger pointers, perhaps who point out the point of this pointless opening paragraph, pointing out the commas that should be points as well.

On a more serious note, it will be easy to balance for a set of time-interval fights (similar with current/recent arcane playstyle), however it could be easy to effectively make the mastery static in regards to spec/class differentiation and/or too simple to play, but the opposite is true, see above post.

If specs and classes are to be different, then they will be performing differently in different environments, and either you make use of the ability of changing specs or live with not living in a fair and perhaps boring world.

"...because if it's not extremely difficult to benefit from the mastery, it will be overpowered" seems to be a strange statement since most aspects of the game that increase DPS/healing/threat/survivabilty are easy to benefit from yet not overpowered. Well, not threat at the moment :P. In regards to the innervate issue, there already exists several abilities that can make almost any DPSer seem godlike (power infusion, ToT, hysteria, and on a less individual level bloodlust/heroism timing).

It seems that some (mostly pessimistic) people adapt all the nonempirical preview suggestions that lack quantitative properties in a too static environment :P. For instance, in the quoted argument it would appear to me that the author pictures mana management methods less dynamic and tailored to MA than they currently are (not).

On a personal level it would be nice to have a reason to play a DPS spec as main again, and I am hopefully not alone in thinking that DPSing during the current expansion has been too easy and less enjoyable than it should/could be, especially in ICC and TOC, and hope that arcane mage will be that spec.

---------- Post added 2010-07-21 at 11:01 AM ----------

Lemme put it to you this way: you play a Rogue. Whenever you are at less than 100% energy, you will do less than your maximum damage. Does that still seem appealing? How about this: you play a DK and whenever you have a rune on CD or have runic power built up, you will do less dps than when you have no runic power or runes on CD.


This idea is so damn useless that I almost want to fire every one of their creative design team. This coming from the same R&D that thinks a magic mushroom is ideal for the druid class....

First of all, magic mushrooms is the next level of immersive MMOs.

Secondly, that IS how rogues and DKs work, except they gain their "mana" back much faster and have much higher relative costs, the way arcane mages will probobly have to work, not at those levels and at mana costs similar relatively to today, for the mastery to feel the way it should. Even, or especially, in PVP this is probobly how it will work. You will have a several abilities and possibly reworked old ones at your disposal to make the mastery more like a frequently used CD that you activate by gaining mana. As a PVPer, I would be very excited at the arcane mastery since it will probobly mean a lot of burst depending on how the mastery plays out.

took the mana adept changes, and looked at them for what they are: another way to penalize mages because of their mana. If I am at 100% mana now, I do the same damage as I would at 25% mana, regardless of spec, gear, ect. But I guess in Cata I will do MORE dps when at 100%, and less dps when I am below 100%. In other words, after the first cast in a fight, my dps will start to dwindle, until I can use stuff like mana gem, potions, and evocate to get my mana back up. Well, I hate to say it, but doing 'more' dps doesn't mean a thing when the majority of the time I will be doing 'less dps' because my mana pool is shrinking with every cast.

This whole argument seems to be based around that there will not be enough mana abilities to make MA useful or fun, and on a possibly erronous interpretation and using regardlessly low numbers of the mastery, all of which does not seem too constructive. If you maybe suggested on how the ability could/should work within the preview's parameters rather than assuming it won't work and then thinking of a simple way it won't, maybe you will enjoy arcane PVP.