6.0 Mage Speculation & Paranoia

[maizensh]

Tier 5:
Remove Nether Tempest
Remove Living Bomb
Remove Frost Bomb

Add: Spellfire Tempest
Instant
Modifies your Mage Bomb, allowing it to be placed on unlimited targets and deal 3900 (+292.32% of Spell power) spellfire damage over 12 sec. Each time Spellfire Tempest deals damage, an additional 50% of that damage is also dealt to a random target within 10 yards.

Add: Frostfire Bomb
Instant
Modifies your Mage Bomb, allowing it to be placed on two targets and deal 5166 (+321.44% of Spell power) frostfire damage over 18 sec. Each time the target takes a tick of damage, there is a 15% chance their movement speed will be slowed by 30% for 2 sec.

I might be missing something, but it seems that without snapshots these bombs will just become the new invocation with shorter duration.

[Imnick]

I might be missing something, but it seems that without snapshots these bombs will just become the new invocation with shorter duration.

They're very similar to the bombs we have already, just renamed and with different damage types >_>
I have absolutely no idea how "a dot" is anything like Invocation.

Granted, but one thing I'd like to actually talk about is SnD becoming passive. Anyone else think Savage Roar and Inquisition will get the same treatment? Perhaps that could be a hint that L90 talents are gone for good. If you remove one maintenance buff, why not remove them all?

To be fair though, SnD for Assassination was always a joke (for those who don't know: 1CP SnD as Ass = essentially passive once you Envenom), but was that passiveness applied only to Assassination or Rogue in general? If general, we can pretty much confirm the removal of maintenance buffs.

They confirmed it is only for Assassination and they still intend the other two specs to cast it regularly, they are not heading away from maintenance buffs (and I don't think that's a bad thing).

RoP could stick with Arcane but I never want to see IW and Invo ever again, and RoP when I'm not Arcane.

I'd be sad to see IW gone though! Yeah it needs to be untied from mana, as do all three, but take damage > do more damage has always been a fun mechanic for me. Doing that when it was an Arcane talent was a high point of ICC!
Also really not sure why you want RoP to be Arcane exclusive when it could just be a choice for all three specs...

[Fim]

<snip> They are not heading away from maintenance buffs (and I don't think that's a bad thing).</snip>

Invocation is the only proper maintenance buff of the three. RoP's positioning restriction (even with the larger range, it's still useless for PvP/questing/anything but raid bosses). IW is cool, but if the tradeoff is a reliable maintenance buff vs something dependent on boss mechanics to trigger, then it shouldn't come as a surprise that Invocation wins.

I still think the biggest argument against them is that we didn't actually need them. At some point the devs said that we weren't balanced on having 100% uptime on the buffs. This was complete bullshit, and it's pretty clear that we do indeed need to keep them up as efficiently as possible.

In which case, why not make the spells just hit harder? What was gained by adding the lvl 90s? They didn't make gameplay more interesting for us because spec determines the choice of which one to use, and encounter mechanics severely limit the utility of two of them (I really wonder if they even thought about non-raid encounters and PvP when creating them - and I'd bet good money that the answer is no).

In the case of Invocation and RoP it's also just one more bar to watch. With DoT snapshotting we've had to stare at buff bars much more closely. That was bad enough, but together with DoT Timers/Affdots on top of the boss mod bars (and mana if you are arcane), I'm barely actually looking at the boss anymore. The metagame is who can rearrange and supplement the default UI to monitor their current state most efficiently. This acts as a skill differentiator, but I'm not sure it's fun.

[Imnick]

We were talking about all classes, not mages in that quote
Don't quote one sentence out of context of the whole discussion and then write four paragraphs on it

[Fim]

We were talking about all classes, not mages in that quote
Don't quote one sentence out of context of the whole discussion and then write four paragraphs on it

My mistake. I couldn't possibly know that when you were discussing Blizzard's design for all classes on the Mage forum in a thread about Mage information for 6.0, that you did not intend for further discussion of that intent as it applied specifically to Mages.

Here I thought I was just dragging us back on topic.

[troywahl]

I just hope we get some love, our level 90 talents are so weak and they keep nerfing fire. What about the warlocks, a decent warlock I can't even touch, lol. Anyways, I am looking forward to seeing what they have in store and glad we finally get a meteor!!! I just want my fire orb back now.

[Imnick]

They confirmed it is only for Assassination and they still intend the other two specs to cast it regularly, they are not heading away from maintenance buffs (and I don't think that's a bad thing).

I can't wait to play my Assassination mage in 6.0

[alumii]

With the announcement of how gear will work for WoD, what are some of your thoughts on it. How will the specs be able to min/max with the removal of reforging. I feel like blizzard is simplifying the game to such an extent that there wont be much left for us to figure out. Obviously we dont know how the stat priority will work out for mages but I think this will impact us a great deal in terms of how we gear, especially with only the primary stats changing on gear.

[Pyromelter]

With the announcement of how gear will work for WoD, what are some of your thoughts on it. How will the specs be able to min/max with the removal of reforging. I feel like blizzard is simplifying the game to such an extent that there wont be much left for us to figure out. Obviously we dont know how the stat priority will work out for mages but I think this will impact us a great deal in terms of how we gear, especially with only the primary stats changing on gear.

I think it remains to be seen - either the gear will change with your spec (frost->fire = haste->crit?), or we will all be seeking specific BiS only pieces, like back in wrath. I have a feeling that's how it will go. That said, I am in agreement with you, this seems like they are really oversimplifying it.

Frankly I miss the 71 talent points from wrath. It just feels more satisfying to fill up talent points to me than the system they have now. (Especially having played around with the web based rift and swtor talent calculators... I was like damn i kinda miss it).

[Verain]

- Fire is no longer ball-and-chained to Crit. New system in place such as LocNess's Fire Revamp using a new resource: Heat

I dunno if we'll get a side resource. If anything, the Cata model that was flirted with that involved the fire spells being either expensive or free wouldn't be out of line (aka, mana becomes sort of a dynamic cooldown system, and an oom fire mage would run a lower damage rotation with free utility spells and free lesser damage spells), but I think we'll probably not see anything like that, or anything else.

The big thing that has to happen is that the spec can't have a hardon for a certain stat. With the removal of reforging and some new secondaries announced, the odds that you'll be able to get a decent number of pieces with crit on them are going down, so specs need to have less focus on certain stats.

[Aquamonkey]

I think it remains to be seen - either the gear will change with your spec (frost->fire = haste->crit?)

Only primary stats change based on spec.

[Verain]

Only primary stats change based on spec.

And this is huge for hybrids and not even a thing for pures. If secondaries changed for just pures, that would be quite interesting, but I doubt they have any plans like that.

[SmokeNicotine]

Besides.. The 'cast this to extend' talents will always (I guess) be used with alter time. So you will get at least around 4 sets of extra seconds out of it. I'm not a big fan of RNG, I must admit, I'd rather have the WotLK Affliction lock play style, where you have to keep up with lots of things and that makes up your dps. Skill > RNG.

The 'cast to extend' talent is passive, not a CD.

- - - Updated - - -

the thing with PE is that you will effectively be able to stack your IV quite high past the normal duration on add fights by launching frozen orb into them and spamming the IL procs. You should be gaining .5sec over the gcd every time you cast it, so depending on the pack of mobs, you could really get it to +10secs on top of the gcd cost to spam IL and that is huge.

Or depending on if they catch it and change it in time, drop a target dummy and pop IV and spam IL on it pre-boss pull.

[LocNess]

And this is huge for hybrids and not even a thing for pures. If secondaries changed for just pures, that would be quite interesting, but I doubt they have any plans like that.

Game design unfortunately doesn't recognize what secondary stat is good for each spec. That is why as a Frost Mage, even if I set my loot specialization to "Fire" I can still get Haste/Mastery pieces because I am just a Mage, and the game recognizes each spec with the same basic secondaries. Can they make the game be able to give us better itemization? Probably, but with all the haste caps or mastery and crit differences based on ilevel, it really is a pain in the ass and it is easier to just try and cover all the bases.

It would be cool to have a bunch of haste/mastery pieces as Frost, then spec change and they all change to Haste/Crit, but unfortunately we just have to suck it up and change specs and regem our entire character every time our itemization slightly changes based on what gear we get now (for those min maxers)

[Imnick]

Reforging I always felt was a fairly poor implementation, as it ended up as an essential tool rather than something you used to make an undesirable piece feel like less of a burden, so I am not sad it is gone. Really I am not sad at all about any barrier to being able to put your gear on mid-raid rather than waiting until you have time to reforge, regem and enchant everything in Stormwind being removed, that was always fairly unsatisfying and I'm not sure removing the spreadsheet that did your reforging for you is really a meaningful decrease in complexity.

I'd be displeased if personal loot only dropped BiS pieces and changing spec changed all your secondary stats though... that would be oversimplifying things.

[Deleted]

But it should be more clear in my opinion. Is the goal to give a mage (for example) an identity by a choosen spec? Or is the goal that a mage can switch to whatever is needed? If the second is the goal, then gear should change with the spec or maybe armor?

[Imnick]

No it shouldn't?
Secondary stats won't change for anyone, the primary stat changing system is never going to let you play with BiS gear in every spec at the same time because no class desires the same secondaries (and it doesn't affect rings, trinkets, weapons, etc)

If Primary AND Secondary stats were based on your spec what would end up happening is that there would no longer be any point in having more than one piece of gear per slot per armour class apart from Transmogrification, and as all graphics are based on tier sets it'd just end up impossible to wear anything but your own tier gear.

When you change from your Holy spec to your Retribution spec you can do respectable DPS but not the optimum. Similarly if you DPS as Frost wearing Fire gear then you will still not do terrible damage, just not as much as you could. There is nothing wrong with that system.
The system where gear changes to match its secondary stats to what your spec most wants is the system where the only value that matters on an item is its iLvl...

[voltaa]

But it should be more clear in my opinion. Is the goal to give a mage (for example) an identity by a choosen spec? Or is the goal that a mage can switch to whatever is needed? If the second is the goal, then gear should change with the spec or maybe armor?

From the sounds of some old tweets, the first one, GC has stated he liked when someone was a Insert Spec Insert Class.

I for one am fine with this idea, the problem lies with how, while this has stood firm for mages all expansion (until the frost changes) other classes (locks) can change to all 3 specs on the fly easily with little to no change in gear, reforges, gems, enchants etc.

I have a feeling that with the coming expansion secondaries won't be AS important, since this expansion they went kind of overboard with the importance of secondaries as well as giving out green stats like candy, letting us hit rediculously high crit/haste/mastery points.

[Deleted]

@ Imnick

If I wanted or needed to play fire, I´m able to get around 15k Crit (Ilvl 574). An equal geared Fire Mage, with crit focused gear would reach 19 - 19,5k Crit. This is huge! If you need a lot of movement and cleave on 4- 5 targets during progression, would you bring the 15k Crit Fire Mage or an 19 - 19,5k Fire Mage or another Warlock?

@ voltaa

If a spec is able to do 90 - 95% of what the other spec is able to do, I´m fine with haste is frost, mastery arcane, and crit for fire. But if the disparity is too high between the specs, something has to change.

[Imnick]

Are you asking whether you'd take someone in their offspec over someone playing in their main spec? The answer there is kind of obvious...

The idea is not to make specs completely interchangeable no