Mage Nerf Incoming? (Blue Post)

[FutureX]

The following post was made by Ghostcrawler on 10/13/2010
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Rather than try and address multiple threads, I'm just going to plop our current thoughts in this one post. Please excuse the brevity.

1) We think Fury, Arms, Feral cat and Retribution dps is too low and we will be buffing them.
2) We think mage dps is too high, especially Fire, and will be nerfing it.
3) We think Shadow priest dps is too high, but that's largely a result of Shadow Word: Death spam, which is tough on healers. We'll be fixing that.
4) We think Destro warlock dps is too high, but that's largely a result of Searing Pain spam, which is tough on tanks. We'll be fixing that.
5) As we suspected, PvP dps is just too high given that the health pools of Cataclysm haven't kicked in yet. While competitive PvP is over for the moment, we still want the environment to feel better so we will be buffing resilience. This change might be reverted at level 85.

There will probably be more changes after another night of raiding and BGs. Many of the bug fixes we have made today will affect dps as well. Stay tuned.

Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer
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UPDATE MAGE HOTFIX*

The following post was made by Ghostcrawler on 10/14/2010 11:14:38 PDT
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We made many changes yesterday. A lot of these were bug fixes, and many bug fixes will affect damage one way or the other. So just because you don't see a specific change referenced below, doesn't mean it didn't change.

With that said, here are the specific changes we made in reference to my previous post:

1) We buffed the base points and coefficients of many warrior dps abilities. We didn't do as much to tanking abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Ret abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Feral cat abilities.

2) We lowered the base points and coefficients of many Mage abilities, but lowered Fire more than the other two.
3) We nerfed Shadow Word: Death, but it is possible we didn't nerf it enough. It should not be Shadow's biggest spell.

4) We returned Searing Pain's damage to its 3.3.5 levels.

5) We increased the benefit of resilience by 50% for players level 80 and below. The tooltips will probably not reflect this change.

We don't have any other changes to announce at this time. I am reluctant to mention additional classes or specs that we are looking at currently for fear of instilling excitement or panic.

Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer
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My opinion:
Personally I do not find “Fire” DPS to be exceptionally high in a single target situation. My H ICC25 geared mage was capable of sustaining similar DPS to what we have currently in the patch (outside of ICC). So far on test dummies I have found using a rotation of Scorch, LB, FFBx3, FB, Pyro Crit, and Combustion to keep me around 12k dps. The rotation is not forgiving of errors. If I use just FFB or FB it tends to dip by ~1k-1.5k. That said I do see quite a bit of DPS increases in situations where we have multiple targets, it scales very quickly. Hopefully it is only that portion they are looking into.

In comparison to other classes I do not feel we are out of line in single target situations. There’s a warlock in my guild with similar level gear and we used to be on equal footing DPS wise prior to the patch. Now I find myself trailing her by 3k dps. (12 vs 15k), a destro lock. I’ve also noticed Boomkins doing very high amounts of DPS.

I’m not saying some aspects of Mages are not broken or very powerful. Using my fire gear I tried an Arcane spec and managed to get off a few 60-72k Arcane Blast. The sustained DPS for arcane seems appropriate if not just a little too powerful over fire with lesser gear atm. That burst of 60-72k in a single shot however is OP even considering health pools at level 85 (let’s say 100k HP?).

We really need glyphs to be corrected before we can even jump all over these #s.
Your thoughts?

***After the "new" hotfix I'm doing a lot less DPS ~9-10k (Fire). This is less than before the patch, yet my Arcane Blast is still hitting pretty high in Arcane ~60k. Far from a fix imo. My Destro Warlock guildy is still doing close to 15k dps in similar gear.

[AuthurDent]

Yes it's too high.. and the mage is my main. We weren't doing that DPS before the patch.. we really shouldn;t be doing this much now.

Locks are getting nerfed down too... we will probably end up aroudn 8-9k on the single target 80 Raid dummy

[litledude]

Was fun while it lasted....

[FutureX]

I think Arcane DPS burst is too high, I can hit a single arcane blast for 73k in my Fire PvE gear with default mastery as arcane. Fire DPS doesn't seem all that high to me, I found it on par with other classes except Destro Locks. I've only found fire damage too high when there are other targets nearby and you spread DoTs to them... not single target DPS. My GS is about ~6300

[Swizzle]

Still dumbfounded that people care about the numbers in this patch.

[Gamdwelf]

/agree with swizzle

Why can't they fix the prime glyph problem before working on numbers, srsly.

[Jon]

Still dumbfounded that people care about the numbers in this patch.

There's still two months of playing until Cata hits, so of course people care.

Also, if things are fundamentally wrong for you class/spec, buggy skills or bad scaling... adding 5 more levels will NOT fix those issues.

So of course people care about the numbers, it'd be foolish not to care.

[Mogu]

Damnit
And I thought we were going to be the new paladins
....
*Cries*

[Swizzle]

There's still two months of playing until Cata hits, so of course people care.

Also, if things are fundamentally wrong for you class/spec, buggy skills or bad scaling... adding 5 more levels will NOT fix those issues.

So of course people care about the numbers, it'd be foolish not to care.

There's this little thing called beta...

[sicness]

There's still two months of playing until Cata hits, so of course people care.

Also, if things are fundamentally wrong for you class/spec, buggy skills or bad scaling... adding 5 more levels will NOT fix those issues.

So of course people care about the numbers, it'd be foolish not to care.

It is foolish when most classes have a core ability obtained in the 80-85 range. Look at warriors right now, they suck solely because of two core abilities they get at those levels, not because the numbers are wrong. Trying to balance around level 80 with classes getting more abilities by 85 is just silly.

[Gogetaex]

Yeah. I'm currently number 3 on DPS in my raid, whereas I'm normally number one, as a fire mage. Currently, Boomkins, SP, and Warlocks are eating my face.

[Xiun]

God I hope they nerf icelance into the ground.

Being a frost mage, spamming one spell and killing someone is not fun, challenging, or fair.

Why I've been playing fire the last few hours =[

[mordale]

Damnit
And I thought we were going to be the new paladins
....
*Cries*

you are the new paladins overpowered for one day and then bitched about ti'll the end of time.

[Deleted]

Still dumbfounded that people care about the numbers in this patch.

I'm still dumbfounded that Mages didn't expect to get nerfed. Remember Divine Storm? Was it fun getting killed in under 3 seconds by a PvE Ret Paladin in S4 Gear? Not for anyone but the Paladins.

"BUT IT'S BALANCED FOR 80!", We said. (Which was clearly bullshit, it was retardedly overpowered)
"Nope." Blizzard said.

[Reinhard von Lohengramm]

oh god.....ghostcrawler have mercy and dont nerf us to the ground.......plz

[Tweal]

Yeah. I'm currently number 3 on DPS in my raid, whereas I'm normally number one, as a fire mage. Currently, Boomkins, SP, and Warlocks are eating my face.

I'm in a similar situation. The only people who can even compete with my damage is our boomkin and our two spriests. I notice they're not nerfing the chicken.

I do agree that we are doing a little too much damage. On festergut last night I was doing almost 25k dps without PIs or anything of the sort.

[Mogu]

Yeah. I'm currently number 3 on DPS in my raid, whereas I'm normally number one, as a fire mage. Currently, Boomkins, SP, and Warlocks are eating my face.

How much DPS are you doing?
I had 12k on dummies.

[Jon]

There's this little thing called beta...

Yes, and there were also PTRs running but that didn't stop this patch from being quite buggy, with multiple broken classes. And beta doesn't change the fact that there's still close to 2 months of playtime until Cata hits.

While some classes like warriors might be missing some core abilities, there are also specs like kitty druids who already have all their dps mechanics they're going to get.. and adding 5 levels won't change the fact that they're totally crappy with them. So yeah, better tackle the biggest problems NOW rather than assume Cataclysm will somehow automatically fix them.

[Underskilled]

There's this little thing called beta...

Blizzard likes money, if a bunch of players unsubscribe, even for 2 months until cataclysm comes out, Blizzard loses 2 months of those players' money, so of course they're still gonna work to make everyone happy.

[Mogu]

Blizzard likes money, if a bunch of players unsubscribe, even for 2 months until cataclysm comes out, Blizzard loses 2 months of those players' money, so of course they're still gonna work to make everyone happy.

Start boycott to unsubscribe if blizz nerfs mages?
Go go go?
/Sarcasm, sort of.