Images have great potential, but the suggestions here are a little too close to Monk's Storm, Earth and Fire, albeit with a CD and without the damage reduction. Blizz aren't that keen on homogenisation, even though they've been shoehorned into it at nearly every corner.
Personally, I think MI has quite an 'Arcane' feel to it, and could be used as some part of a redesign of that spec. Arcane Power being effectively the only Arcane cooldown and just being 'you do more damage' is the dull cherry on a dull rotation. If I could spawn a copy of myself, and have it have some interaction with how I generate charges, well; that's for the designers to contemplate.
Not that any of this will ever happen as the whine if any spec lost it (even if we were given GI as baseline) would be flat out hilarious. Mahh aggro'z! Yawn.
Shaman's Elemental Blast is more like seeking aid of all the elements at once, thus EB deals damage with all elements and buffs the caster with multiple secondary stats. But Mage's Chromatic Bolt IMO should be a more complex fusion of FrostFire damage, which is further empowered with Arcane. So it should apply additional effects to its target, contrary to buffing the caster. E.g. like this:
40% snare is a nod to Frostfire Bolt, deals increased damage in comparison to FFB/FB/FrB so it's always #1 cast priority, uninterruptible to avoid full 3-school lockout and to make it PVP-viable. Knockback is debatable, I just love the mechanic. I miss Blastwave too much. =)Chromatic bolt - a powerful 2.5 sec cast (pre-haste) spell, which deals SpellFrostFire damage, uninterruptible, knockbacks the enemy a medium distance and slows its movement speed by 40%, 15-20 sec cd.
Hoping for better looking spell effects, majority of the Fire and Frost spells are just sad.
Still wondering why I play this game.
I'm a Rogue and I also made a spreadsheet for the Order Hall that is updated for BfA.
Hmmm. That is a very good thing. I am assuming maybe just some built in crit? Or making our current 4P built in to the spec (however that might make it very powerful in the long run, or too much like chaos bolts).Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Or it could be a spellpower modifier buff and the removal of critical mass.
They might remove (or drastically lower) the CD on Inferno Blast and adjust the damage numbers just so you can always force a Pyro with 'just' one crit.
Either way, I'm calling it now; it'll be a shoddy fix (though hopefully not as shoddy as giving us a 2x Critical Mass then lowering it every damn patch). They're clearly, for whatever reason, leaving Fire inextricably connected to crit and almost unplayable without it, just like Warriors.
Hey Blizz, word of advice: the Mage/Warrior 'without crit, you do nothing' model doesn't work, the Warlock 'without crit, you do LESS' model does.
Last edited by mmoc272d019450; 2014-03-25 at 09:31 AM.
Well, the main purpose of crit for Fire is Hot Streak, so in order to make it more consistent even at low crit levels Blizz can change HS proc itself. E.g. a Pyroblast! proc could have a 100% crit chance, with crit chance increasing its damage a-la Chaos Bolt. But Warming Up and Hot Streak proc only from non-Pyro crits. Inferno Blast makes sure you can have a HS proc roughly every time IB comes off CD and Pyro! crits help reduce luck/gear dependant damage swings. Higher crit levels linearly increase the damage of Pyro! and slightly increase the amount of HS procs. Less chain-casting Pyros allows to make each of them be more significant, i.e. deal more damage.
What do you think? Too much of a change?
Kinda, but crit remains the best stat even after that since it's the only stat that triple dips into combustion damage. First, crits make a more powerful ignite. Second, Pyro hits harder than Fireball, so more pyros in the chain, higher damage. Third, Combustion ticks can crit too.
I was thinking more "for every Fireball/Scorch/Pyroblast you cast that isn't a crit, your crit chance of these spells raise x%. This effect is reset when you have two crits in a row" - This would make the Critical Mass nerf/buffs disappear mostly and they'd only have to adjust the trigger value instead.
Or, Combustion ticks are always crits/non-crits. It wouldn't fix scaling completely, but at least they don't have to nerf an ability as hard as they did with combustion in 5.4
Hot streak could just work like fingers of frost :P Since they love to homogenize.
or FB and PB just have a flat chance to proc heating up.
(I may have missed an entire page before posting this ><)
Let Reason Prevail
I'm not sure of the coding time it would take, but each spec could really do with its own resource. Fire would benefit greatly from a less linear 'NO CRIT NO PYRO' generation of 'heat' or what-the-fuck-ever, that crit speeds up but doesn't hamstring. Can you imagine if Destro only gained embers from direct Incinerate crits? They'd have to zerg crit gems as Fire does, losing all that insane mastery and still probably end up casting only about half of the Chaos Bolt/Shadowburns they do now. Ugly.
Arcane already has debuff stacks, but that's a fairly bandaid/legacy fix to that spec, it could really do with the Holy Power/Ember treatment. Frost doesn't necessarily need anything, but a resource centered around the Icicles would work nicely (consume X icicles to do X).
Anyway, think I'm re-treading old ground here. So many possibilities that will never happen. Ahhh.
I think Frost is fine, especially since there are new secondary stats in WoD to scale off of. Fire could use some mechanic to smooth out its all-or-nothing approach. But Arcane is different. I loved the spec back in Wrath, both in PVE and PVP, despite its drawbacks. However I can't stand its MoP iteration. They've added some unfun mechanics upon heavy mana restricton - dire lack of mobility, maintenance buffs - and perfected the obsessive-compulsive aspect of the spec. "Rune, bomb, one, two, three, four, can-do-more - four!, AM, can-do-more - four!, bomb, AM, can-do-more - four!, too low - ABarr, one, two......". I couldn't make myself to really play it this expac.