6.0 Mage Speculation & Paranoia

[Imnick]

So we need to talent into Cone of Arcane?

[Northem]

So we need to talent into Cone of Arcane?

Yeah, certainly would have more success that [Rune of Power]

[huth]

Also, check out spells like [Typhoon] or [Leg Sweep] considering that both belong to classes with more defense than the mages ...

Sorry, did i miss something? Since when do Druids have better defense than Mages?

[Northem]

Sorry, did i miss something? Since when do Druids have better defense than Mages?

They are a leather wearing class... for example...

[Seneca]

Also: Druid and DK battle resses, life grip, symbiosis, tricks of the trade, misdirect, warlock summons, selfless healer. This is hardly the first ability in the game that offers no benefit to solo play.

Reminder: mine is not a campaign to remove Amplify Magic, I'll just state facts or some concerns I have.

What you say is true, to an extent. Everyone can take advantage of the spells, not only healers, and they all are based completely or in part on the user skill, not on the empowered players (healers). I won't talk about all them one by one or I'll stay years, but it is pretty obvious. I'll list just two examples. Life Grip, you can grip everyone, not just healers, and the power of this spell is based on the priest's choices. Symbiosis, you can use symbiosis on everyone, not just healers, and the benefit of your symbiosis will be based on the druid, on the choice the druid did, not on your healers. Amplify Magic, 1)no healers, no uses; 2)its power doesn't depend on you, if your healers suck, your spell will be wasted, (and you will waste 1 gcd too), differently from Life Grip and Symbiosis.

And even then, if we use the glyph of ice block for the heal we can still pop AM before ice block to get extra healing, and it may work with things like healing potions as well, so it's not 100% useless for the mage anyway. Could also potentially boost the initial heal from cauterize if timed well and the heal from cold snap.

Interesting point of view, but we have to be realistic too:
1) you need to take a particular glyph (glyph of regenerative ice) or a particular talent (cold snap/evanesce, not sure it will work with cauterize) or to use a particular spell (ice block) in order to make Amplify Magic work on you, just to have the basis to make it work.
2) even if you use these spells/talents, here there's some math (feel free to fix it): Evanesce = 2,4% health healed with Amplify Magic every 2min / Ice Block = 4,8% health healed every 5min / Cold Snap = 4,4% health healed every 3 min. So, even if we take some glyphs and talents just to make it work, it is not going to be worth.

(Reminder: mine is not a campaign to remove Amplify Magic, I'll just state facts or some concerns I have.) My question is, why, in a game where an ability pruning was made and some specs lost up to 12 spells (arcane), they add a spell which will be way less useful and way less used than even just one of the 12s we lost? Why does Amplify Magic deserve an action bar slot, but Ice Lance or Deep Freeze for arcane/fire, for example, does not?

Another thing bothers me, and it is the lack of openmindedness while creating/reworking some talents/spells. This is what I don't get:
- RoP, useful only in some/all(<- so you guys can get my point and don't stop here and get mad) boss fights (and some other rare exceptions)
- Prismatic Crystal, useful only in some/all boss fights (and some other rare exceptions)
- Kindling/Thermal Void/Overpowered, useful only in some/all boss fights (and some other rare exceptions)
- Amplify Magic, useful only if there's some healer out there, is awake and is good.
- other talents/spells/perks, but the first ones I listed are the biggest offenders, imo, and the majority of the other talents/spells/perks probably just doesn't work because they are underpowered, number wise, not mechanic wise.

Another thing that bothers me is that fire and arcane lost way more spells than frost, even if fire and arcane had less spells in their arsenal to begin with. Arcane lost 12 spells, and it is/was one of the spec, considering all the 34 specs, with less spells in the first place.

Is Dragon's Breath even a real upgrade to Cone of Cold? Unless it's being changed, it still has double the cooldown and I think when both are glyphed, will end up dealing the same damage. And I'd rather have the snare than a disorient that will most likely instantly break in group content. It seems like it'll be a straight up downgrade instead.

Sometimes, it will be an upgrade, but not always and it sucks for this reason. It's not an upgrade, it's a different spell (the same can be said for the nova talents). Cone of Cold has way less cd, snare effects stacks, and snare effects don't break on damage. If your DB was on cd when you needed it, if it was dr'ed or if it was broken, then Cone of Cold would have been way better, in these cases.

It's not supposed to be an upgrade, it's more towards flavor. And Cone in PvP with the Scorch movement buff would have made Fire untouchable most of the time. As you said in instances CoC might be better as the adds can probably be slowed, but all in all it's pretty even in my books.

I agree on the first part, but balance > flavor, as blizzard keep saying but doesn't respect when they do not want to. About the second part, it's not true imo, and now I will tell you why I think so. First, we have to consider that Scorch (as Celestalon said) will do very low damage, so even a "invicible" fire mages who actually does not any damage can stay invicible as much as he wants, a fire mages who doesn't do any damage will still be useless, second, this is the reason why Scorch/CoC (movement speed buffs/debuffs) were not going to do fire a god mode pvp spec:
Warriors doesn't care about snares/movement speed bonus. (for obvious reasons I won't list)
Ferals doesn't care too. (/)
Rogues doesn't care too. (/)
Hunters doesn't care too. (/)
Enanchement, retribution, dks, does care, but, gg, we were going to kite them 1v1 in duels. (There's a reason the most of the time these specs play arenas with one of the careless ones).
In addition, we are not even considering that fire, apart from CoC, will lose an enourmous amount of spells (DP,IL, Mage Armor,.....) so I wonder how we should actually kite if we won't able to cast Scorch (it can get interrupted, and if we don't cast it, we don't get the movement speed, a thing that every competent enemy will know and, we can't fake cast it without a proper macro too, which slow our actions anyway.) The situation is even worst for arcane for even more obvious reasons (if someone is concerned, I'll write why I think so).

If this was a way by blizzard to make arcane and fire take advantage of RoP, pvp wise, (because they will be enchained anyway competitive pvp wise, (to a lesser extent fire)), well, it is a well thought april fool, kudos to blizzard, but we are in May TT.

Sorry, did i miss something? Since when do Druids have better defense than Mages?

If you are talking competitive pvp wise, druids have better defense, (feral could be debatable for someone) and they (druids in general) will get even higher defenses in WoD anyway and mages will lose some too.

[Florena]

The reason we got AM while having abilities trimmed is blizz feels we're sub par in the raid utility department and they are removing offensive raid cds except for the bloodlust family such as the warrior crit banner. And they probably didn't want the new mage utility to be a damage reduction like smoke bomb.

[KurenaiXIII]

I still think you're essentially wrong about Rune of Power, Seneca, and are woefully overestimating the number of fights/situations where you can't use RoP. This is different from where RoP might be -optimal-, but just because something isn't the 100% best option doesn't mean it can't be used.

[Seneca]

The reason we got AM while having abilities trimmed is blizz feels we're sub par in the raid utility department and they are removing offensive raid cds except for the bloodlust family such as the warrior crit banner. And they probably didn't want the new mage utility to be a damage reduction like smoke bomb.

What you say is objetively true, and lots of us already knew it. Considering what you said (and blizzard confirmed), I don't get:
1) Why do we need a raid utility spell? If it's too good, mages will be stacked. If it's balanced (as it will be), mages won't be stacked, but will be taken for other reasons, no matter the power of Amplify Magic. So, considering that AM will be balanced for obvious reasons, if mages will be taken without considering Amplify Magic in the equation, why should we have AM to begin with? That's the point.
2) If, for several unknown reasons, we must have a raid utility spell, why, I ask, blizzard didn't make so that the new mage utility spell will be useful even in no - raid situations (20% dr)? (It's rethoric, I know they made it on purpose, but I don't get why), Will mage be too op in solo situations with a 20% dr spell which last 6 sec and is usable every 2min? This could be a reason, I don't know if it is the reason).

[Florena]

What you say is objetively true, and lots of us already knew it. Considering what you said (and blizzard confirmed), I don't get:
1) Why do we need a raid utility spell? If it's too good, mages will be stacked. If it's balanced (as it will be), mages won't be stacked, but will be taken for other reasons, no matter the power of Amplify Magic. So, considering that AM will be balanced for obvious reasons, if mages will be taken without considering Amplify Magic in the equation, why should we have AM to begin with? That's the point.
2) If, for several unknown reasons, we must have a raid utility spell, why, I ask, blizzard didn't make so that the new mage utility spell will be useful even in no - raid situations (20% dr)? (It's rethoric, I know they made it on purpose, but I don't get why), Will mage be too op in solo situations with a 20% dr spell which last 6 sec and is usable every 2min? This could be a reason, I don't know if it is the reason).

Probably to make it distinct from other dps spec utility. Smoke bomb already does damage reduction. AM being a former mage spell but in raid cd form now may be part of it too.

As for why, they want to smooth out raid utility. Nerfing those they think have too much like locks and buffing those they think have too little, mages. That's why they feel the need to give us something.

Is it perfect? No, but it honestly doesn't bother me either, though working nin some personal benefit to the mage would be nice.

[Imnick]

The simple fact of Amplify Magic rather than some raidwide is that
A: We had it before
B: Plenty of other people have DR cooldowns
C: Nobody has healing taken cooldowns

It's just more interesting to have cooldowns with varying effects rather than giving everyone a different flavour of the same spell, it would seem weird to remove another class's existing spell to replace it with a healing one and Mages were the best fit for adding a healing one given that we had one in the past

[Kuni Zyrekai]

(Reminder: mine is not a campaign to remove Amplify Magic, I'll just state facts or some concerns I have.) My question is, why, in a game where an ability pruning was made and some specs lost up to 12 spells (arcane), they add a spell which will be way less useful and way less used than even just one of the 12s we lost? Why does Amplify Magic deserve an action bar slot, but Ice Lance or Deep Freeze for arcane/fire, for example, does not?

You're looking at it from the wrong angle. Amplify Magic is very much a raid cooldown and will be used infinitely more often than any of the lost spells in that situation. Imnick's points are also quite right.

[Frost1129]

What? I don't even... what?

How are you losing access to a talent slot? RoP is a talent that exists. It is -your choice- not to take it. As many people have pointed out, there are -plenty- of talents which see little to no practical use. That doesn't mean that the talent is bad and needs to go.

Unless you've literally been unable to pick a level 90 talent for the whole expansion, that statement doesn't even fly. Unless you somehow think that Rune of Power, by the virtue of its very existence, will force you to never pick a level 90 talent, that doesn't fly. There are two other choices in the tier.

I kind of want to repeat that. It doesn't seem to have sunk into anyone's head.

There are two other choices in the tier.

Do you want to have the absolute best performance in a raid environment, and is RoP it? Then pick it and learn to use it. Do you value ease of use over what RoP could bring? Pick Mirror Images or Incanter's Flow.

It's not that hard, people.

I think you're ignoring the fact that people will always tend to pick the best talent, unless the gains are so small and difficult to come by that they are deemed not worth the effort (like current RoP for Fire/Frost).

The problem is centered around what uptime % blizzard will assume the average player will have. This then dictates how much it can be abused. If it can be abused enough to always have gains over IF for above average players, you are effectively removing IF as a choice. This would happen if you assume a relatively low average uptime. This is the main reason for removing RoP, imo. balancing it around some uptime is going to have to be incredibly well done, or the entire tier is completely out of whack.

On the flip side, if you assume the average uptime is very high, then you are going to exclude many of the players who simply are never going to be able to use RoP for the reasons masta pointed out earlier - RoP requires above average play. IF gets balanced around this high uptime that players will not reach, and now they are pressured away from choosing RoP and into IF (an equally bad situation)

Either way, you lose a talent slot.

Saying there are two other choices and implying that magically fixes the problems of the tier doesn't make sense. There are two choices besides RoP for arcane now, and nobody picks them. Why? Because your DPS would go into the gutter. Does this mean that RoP has no problems in it's current state? Obviously not since they changed it quite a bit.

Those two problems don't even get into the fact that RoP/IF are both %dmg modifiers that scale the talents from the previous tier and the following tier (so they are working cooperatively towards higher gains) while MI does not.

[Seneca]

I still think you're essentially wrong about Rune of Power, Seneca, and are woefully overestimating the number of fights/situations where you can't use RoP. This is different from where RoP might be -optimal-, but just because something isn't the 100% best option doesn't mean it can't be used.

I really don't get what I'm missing, these are the points on what I base my assumptions (apart from the experience aspects), tell me where's the flaw:

1) RoP is harder than the other two choices, so, logically, it should never give you less benefit. As much benefit as the others should be fine. If you work harder to get less, something is wrong.
2) Mathematically (tell me if I am wrong), you lose 1,5sec to cast a rune and 3sec to cast Invocation. Said that, if you lose more time than 1,5sec every min away from your rune, your damage keeps dropping, based on the time wasted.
3) Where, apart from some/all boss fights, you do not waste way more than 1,5sec every 1min?
4) Pvp wise, there's no reason to argue, so we can already exclude 50% of the game.
5) About the other 50%, soloing and pve group content (no raid) wise, you waste way more than 1.5sec every min because: A) you kill your target in way less time than 1 min, so you have to move toward the next one, put another rune, and so on (if you kill 5-10 targets every min, you have to place 5-10 runes = 7,5-10sec spent every min just to cast RoP) B) you have to move because you are going to take damage, being it an elite smashing your face, or a pool of fire in a dungeon and so on. The time lost in the point "A" has to be summed with the one of the point "B".

How can you use RoP in cases which are not "stick in your rune for 57 sec every 1 min or your damage is going to go lower and lower"? What am I missing? I wonder (really).

Is it perfect? No, but it honestly doesn't bother me either, though working nin some personal benefit to the mage would be nice.

(This is about AM)

This is exactly what I think. It's not like I cannot live with AM, but considering that we got ability pruned, and every spell should be used as much as possible, and also considering that for example, warrior's rogue's and dk's ones have personal benefit too, why cannot blizzard work in order to make it so for mage's one too? It's not like they have to rework the whole world of azeroth, they have to change a bit its mechanics, so no resource would be wasted. Again, I can live with it, but improving something improvable with little to no effort can only be a good thing.

The simple fact of Amplify Magic rather than some raidwide is that
A: We had it before
B: Plenty of other people have DR cooldowns
C: Nobody has healing taken cooldowns

It's just more interesting to have cooldowns with varying effects rather than giving everyone a different flavour of the same spell, it would seem weird to remove another class's existing spell to replace it with a healing one and Mages were the best fit for adding a healing one given that we had one in the past

I agree with your points but (minor considerations):
A: it's not like they care about flavor or nostalgia, they really don't, they added AM because they wanted too, not because they felt pressured to do so.
B: I agree, but they could 1) Swap ours with the one of another class which personally benefit from AM too. 2) Add another "original" raid utility spell which can personally empower us.
C: See my B point/s.

It's just more interesting to have cooldowns with varying effects rather than giving everyone a different flavour of the same spell

I totally agree, but it's not hard to respect both this point and the one about the personal benefit.

it would seem weird to remove another class's existing spell to replace it with a healing one

Well this is a fair point to be honest, some pally could have got mad , but blizzard could have added a completely new spell, still original, which could have personally empowered us. I don't know, it feels like they didn't care a lot about AM being useful in other aspects.

Mages were the best fit for adding a healing one given that we had one in the past.

Well we also had Dampen Magic and Temporal Shield, which, from an original pov, imo, looks like a good candidate. And, they do not care about flavor or nostalgia, they showed it during these years, balance > flavor, they also said it sometimes.

I want to make it clear, I am not doing a campaign against AM or RoP, I can live with them and I don't hate them, but I don't get, when blizzard do something, why they do it in a mediocre way rather than in a very good way, considering that it won't be resource draining to do it in very good way. They look lazy, it sounds like this at blizzard headquarters:
8.00 am: "Q: mages need a raid utility cd, other classes have dr. // A: mmm, gives mage AM then." // Questioner: Brilliant!
8.03 am: "Q: what about RoP? Lots of our players hate it. // A: mmm, increase the radius and the duration, should work." // Questioner: You are a genious.
8.05 am: "Q: what about arcane pvp? It sucks. // A: mmm, there's still frost, move on." // Questioner: Such a stupid question, I'm sorry.
8.07 am: "Q: some passives look boring and not game changing. // A: mmm, well, they can ignore them and take the active talents." // Questioner: Your talent is wasted here.
8.10 am: Coffee.

It was ironic and not a way to offend anyone (<- just to be sure).

You're looking at it from the wrong angle. Amplify Magic is very much a raid cooldown and will be used infinitely more often than any of the lost spells in that situation. Imnick's points are also quite right.

If you will just do raids, you, surely, will use AM more than DP. But that's actually my point. If you consider everything you can do in this game, (pvp, pve, group, solo, etc etc) the comparison is not even close. You will use AM everytime you play with someone, and, there is atleast an healer (and, improving the heals of a single healer is not going to be that game changing tbh). DP was always used on everything but stun immune targets (we are not even considering that DPing an high priority target for 5sec every 30sec is way more important than increasing by 20% for 6 sec every 2min the heals of a single healer).

//

Also, I agree with everything Frost said, in particular, these are the parts that imo, deserve to be quoted because summarize what I think about the "if you don't like a talent, don't use it".

On the flip side, if you assume the average uptime is very high, then you are going to exclude many of the players who simply are never going to be able to use RoP for the reasons masta pointed out earlier - RoP requires above average play. IF gets balanced around this high uptime that players will not reach, and now they are pressured away from choosing RoP and into IF (an equally bad situation)

Either way, you lose a talent slot.

Saying there are two other choices and implying that magically fixes the problems of the tier doesn't make sense. There are two choices besides RoP for arcane now, and nobody picks them. Why? Because your DPS would go into the gutter.

The end. I feel it is going to be a wall of text (as always), I don't want to check it >_>.

[Pyromelter]

Rune of Power is the worst talent in the entire game, hands down

Exaggerate more please.

I dare you to come up with a worse talent. I play all 11 classes. Death Knights complain about their level 90s, but that's because they look at rogues and priests and whine. Their level 90 talents are awesome, they just aren't dps buffs, they are utility talents. There are talents that can be fairly useless, but none of those "useless" talents are forced upon any other class to maximize their dps. That's why RoP is so onerous, not only does it suck, but you are required to take it to play arcane mage.

For "useless" talents I see things like Desecrated Ground for dk's and Spectral Guise for Priest, neither of which affect game play of any specs of those classes at all. Are they "bad" talents - sure. But since they aren't required to maximize your combat effectiveness, they don't come close to the crappy jail-cell of Rune of Power.

The only real candidate for comparison is Dream of Cenarius, which forces feral druids to cast healing touch. However a druid can just lazy out on this and cast HT on themselves or with a target of target macro on the tank, and not have to use it as a directed heal, meaning it simply becomes another button to push, and more importantly, doesn't root the druid to the ground or require him or her to put a reticule on the ground.

I get it. You've gone full blown Stockholme. Your captors are now your saviors. You love being in the prison blizzard named "rune of power." Most of us, we don't. I tried arcane once in 5.3 on a celestial court boss. I immediately removed arcane and went back to frost after that, it was that bad. Hitting a dummy was fine.

Plus, you can't come up with any plausible argument that RoP is in any way, shape or form viable for pvp or solo questing. You can certainly come up with an argument, but it won't be plausible, because RoP is not only crappy, but so incredibly sub-optimal in those environments.

- - - Updated - - -

And if you look back and see a lot of complaints from people against RoP is that it's "clunky", "gimps you", "feels awkward" and "isn't fun". In reality, I believe it's their own performance causing these complaints to come out. Poor performance makes you feel like shit. Why not blame it on an ability rather than yourself? It's human nature to blame something you did on someone/thing else. RoP is fine as it is and you are correct in saying that no changes will it. It must come from the players themselves. They're overlooking the fact that (some of them) fucked up and won't accept it.

Or, you could actually believe me, when I tell you I sat in a titan-damned jail cell (aka RoP-type mechanic) for 6 months with absolute mastery in another game, and hated every second of it, and absolutely refuse to ever do that again.

The difference is, in that game, the devs realized what kind of awful crap they were doing to their pyromancers, and they completely got rid of that ability, and everyone was happy, including the non-mages.

- - - Updated - - -

What? I don't even... what?

How are you losing access to a talent slot? RoP is a talent that exists. It is -your choice- not to take it. As many people have pointed out, there are -plenty- of talents which see little to no practical use. That doesn't mean that the talent is bad and needs to go.

Let's hope it's a choice, because I'd really like to play arcane again, but absolutely will not do so if RoP is the maximum dps talent in WoD.

[Sarm]

Wait, so is Invocation really that bad for arcane after all? Mastamage was recommending a haste-invo arcane build to me a while ago on the WoW forum when I made a whiny anti-RoP post over there.

Edit: Well, I remember him saying he used it during 5.0 or so but I assumed he thought it should still measure up in some way if he was still going to support it.

[Florena]

Wait, so is Invocation really that bad for arcane after all? Mastamage was recommending a haste-invo arcane build to me a while ago on the WoW forum when I made a whiny anti-RoP post over there.

Yeah, invocation nerfs your passive mana regen, so over the minute it's up your mana goes down steadily, while run grants a constant mana regen to help keep you topped off, so for arcane and its mastery it's better, or that's how I understand it at least I don't play arcane.

[Polarthief]

Wait, so is Invocation really that bad for arcane after all? Mastamage was recommending a haste-invo arcane build to me a while ago on the WoW forum when I made a whiny anti-RoP post over there.

It was playable, but not as optimal. Same applies now, but to an even bigger degree.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, invocation nerfs your passive mana regen, so over the minute it's up your mana goes down steadily, while run grants a constant mana regen to help keep you topped off, so for arcane and its mastery it's better, or that's how I understand it at least I don't play arcane.

You're intended to use Invocation a lot sooner than 1m with a Hastevocation build. Around like 7-8 casts you'll be oom.

[Deleted]

I get it. You've gone full blown Stockholme. Your captors are now your saviors. You love being in the prison blizzard named "rune of power." Most of us, we don't. I tried arcane once in 5.3 on a celestial court boss. I immediately removed arcane and went back to frost after that, it was that bad. Hitting a dummy was fine.

Plus, you can't come up with any plausible argument that RoP is in any way, shape or form viable for pvp or solo questing. You can certainly come up with an argument, but it won't be plausible, because RoP is not only crappy, but so incredibly sub-optimal in those environments.

Now, I know that mods are taking a break, but you're just being offensive now. If the direction this debate is going is that those who like RoP are people with Stockholme syndrome(Which is a lovely term to sound intelligent when you're just trying to insult the other guy by the way) then maybe we should ask supers to get rid of it instead.

You people are the reason our community is so toxic that we end up without one. I hope you're happy.

[Imnick]

It's not true that they don't care about flavour or nostalgia, they value it less than balance but they don't give it a zero value.

Given two identically balanced options, one of which has a greater level of flavour/nostalgia, they'll pick the flavoursome one.
Amplify Magic is that option! And is much less of a balance headache than a raid-wide temporal shield could end up being (Useless half the time, amazing the other half).
Balance is more important but they don't treat things feeling natural as completely unimportant.

[Akraen]

Now, I know that mods are taking a break, but you're just being offensive now. If the direction this debate is going is that those who like RoP are people with Stockholme syndrome(Which is a lovely term to sound intelligent when you're just trying to insult the other guy by the way) then maybe we should ask supers to get rid of it instead.

You people are the reason our community is so toxic that we end up without one. I hope you're happy.

Without a community you say?

Maybe we can help with that. For mages, by mages.