Well, well, well... Rune of Power.

[Deleted]

What will happen with RoP in BfA?
It will stay, of course. I bet my mage-hood on it.
Should I be wrong then I shall conjure food and drink for everyone involved.

[Deleted]

I like the visual, but I dislike it's gameplay a great deal.

I hope Mirror Image gets a massive improvement and becomes the go to talent.

[Obelisk Kai]

In the Q and A prior to 7.1.5 they said the following (grabbing this from mmo-champion's summary I googled)

Rune of Power
Some of the problem with this is tuning. Rune of Power is meant to be a situational talent, for fights where you won't be moving too much.
With the current tuning it feels necessary in every fight, making it feel bad when you have to move.
The underlying design might be better with a different cooldown and duration.
In the short term the team will look at tuning of the other talents

It's the highlighted text that interests me. Back before 7.1.5 they saw RoP as a situational talent. But they recently said

The overall talent system will remain largely unchanged, but we will be refining our approach. One of the major challenges in setting up talent rows is that they serve two conflicting desires: choices within a row should be meaningfully varied, but also should not feel like they are simply a test of which is best in a particular setting.

In my mind, this means Rune of Power is a problem. If they intended it to be a situational talent at the start of Legion, how do they reconcile that with a new approach whereby a talent should not just be the best in a particular setting (such as a low movement fight)?

It will be interesting to see what Blizzard does with the talent in coming iterations.

[HuxNeva]

Don't get why they insist on keeping this in when it is almost universally reviled. As a Fire Mage, mobility is one of the things why you play the spec. RoP completely negates this. And 'low mobility fights'? Their design recently has been adding more unpredictable movement requirements to fights, so yeah, you could be in a stacked low movement phase, unless you get targetted by ability X, in which case you better run it out of the raid etc., turning RoP into just another layer of RNG.

[Charge me Doctor]

I love legion version of RoP. Being able to sacrifice mobility to gain huge damage burst in a short window is awesome, i always loved oirignal pyroblast and i do love legendary bracer proc. It just feels very cool to stand there for 4 seconds casting this big-ass boulder of fire and see it crit for 15 mil

[Rhov]

Don't get why they insist on keeping this in when it is almost universally reviled. As a Fire Mage, mobility is one of the things why you play the spec. RoP completely negates this. And 'low mobility fights'? Their design recently has been adding more unpredictable movement requirements to fights, so yeah, you could be in a stacked low movement phase, unless you get targetted by ability X, in which case you better run it out of the raid etc., turning RoP into just another layer of RNG.

Really, I don't understand the logic behind the qq about RoP. Yes it's not the best talent out there but at least requires a "small" amount of planning and correct positioning. If you know that a mechanic is coming and you are about to play your CDs just wait a bit to ensure that you are not targtetted and then go pew pew. It's your fault in the first place. Bad RNG is bad rng of course but with correct play and cd management you can still do fine damage.

Mage's specs are all quite "easy" to execute, but having options like RoP makes the whole thing more interesting. That's my point of view at least.

[Phookah]

I love legion version of RoP. Being able to sacrifice mobility to gain huge damage burst in a short window is awesome, i always loved oirignal pyroblast and i do love legendary bracer proc. It just feels very cool to stand there for 4 seconds casting this big-ass boulder of fire and see it crit for 15 mil

More like half that, but yeah

Fire hits like a noodle and it makes me sad

OT: If RoP was an instant cast I'd like it a lot more.

[HuxNeva]

Really, I don't understand the logic behind the qq about RoP. Yes it's not the best talent out there but at least requires a "small" amount of planning and correct positioning. If you know that a mechanic is coming and you are about to play your CDs just wait a bit to ensure that you are not targtetted and then go pew pew. It's your fault in the first place. Bad RNG is bad rng of course but with correct play and cd management you can still do fine damage.

Mage's specs are all quite "easy" to execute, but having options like RoP makes the whole thing more interesting. That's my point of view at least.

Planning? Unfortunately we can't plan our 4 sec cast bracer procs. It's not just the rune by itself, it's that in combination with all the other things in a heavy RNG proc reactive spec, and raid mechanics increasingly require unplanned mobility, it is a very poor match.

[Doffen]

I love legion version of RoP. Being able to sacrifice mobility to gain huge damage burst in a short window is awesome, i always loved oirignal pyroblast and i do love legendary bracer proc. It just feels very cool to stand there for 4 seconds casting this big-ass boulder of fire and see it crit for 15 mil

Yeah, the current RoP is nice. Playing as arcane and lining it up with the other cooldowns is for me satisfying gameplay. Maining the mage again in BfA, hope they'll keep it as it is.

[Obelisk Kai]

Planning? Unfortunately we can't plan our 4 sec cast bracer procs. It's not just the rune by itself, it's that in combination with all the other things in a heavy RNG proc reactive spec, and raid mechanics increasingly require unplanned mobility, it is a very poor match.

Yeah, the current RoP is nice. Playing as arcane and lining it up with the other cooldowns is for me satisfying gameplay. Maining the mage again in BfA, hope they'll keep it as it is.

Maybe Rune of Power should be an Arcane Mage only talent?

It doesn't seem to play well with either fire or frost.

Particularly fire. Yes ROP is the best choice now for fire, but a spec that is so mobile should not have to be locked down by using ROP.

[Rhov]

Planning? Unfortunately we can't plan our 4 sec cast bracer procs. It's not just the rune by itself, it's that in combination with all the other things in a heavy RNG proc reactive spec, and raid mechanics increasingly require unplanned mobility, it is a very poor match.

I agree, but that's an issue with the fire design at the moment. Without bracers procs especially during your comb/rop phases your dps will probably be below average. I am just pointing, that RoP requires at least correct usage. With IF you just dont even care about anything. Not even mentioning MI which I still dont understand why it's a talent option. It should be baseline.

Both Fire and Frost are heavily RNG dependant atm and hopefully this will not be the case in BfA (at least not in that degree).

[Doffen]

Maybe Rune of Power should be an Arcane Mage only talent?

It doesn't seem to play well with either fire or frost.

Particularly fire. Yes ROP is the best choice now for fire, but a spec that is so mobile should not have to be locked down by using ROP.

Yeah, I think it suits nicely with Arcane, for gameplay, and visually as well. A part of the Arcane toolkit I would say. The RoP we had before was a bit too static, but in Legion they changed it for the better. I would like it to stay as it is now. Been so used to it that it feels like a core ability for Arcane. More so than the other two. But that could be just me Arcane Power and Rune of Power, says it all ^^

[Dalheim]

Never gonna use it, even if its the best shit. I will use Incanter's Flow (Or whatever its called). I wish they could just re-add the Evocation stuff from MoP, were you used Evocation (With no CD) to get a buff (dont remember 100% what it gave) and then recharge it once you got low on mana. That's the best Mage time, for me.

[Swizzle]

I wish they would rework RoP to work like the Fire PvP talent Flamecannon. Reward and encourage the Mage for standing still, and put the onus on the Mage to do it. Also, buff up all spells baseline damage so that it doesn't feel like a punishment when we have to move.

[Charge me Doctor]

Maybe Rune of Power should be an Arcane Mage only talent?

It doesn't seem to play well with either fire or frost.

Particularly fire. Yes ROP is the best choice now for fire, but a spec that is so mobile should not have to be locked down by using ROP.

You are "locked down" (with the range of RoP i can't really call it "locked down") for literally 10 seconds per use. And you use it only at appropriate time (ideally) when you don't need to move at all, so it's a huge free damage boost.

Again, if you don't like it you simply can ignore it and pick whatever passive talent you want

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I wish they would rework RoP to work like the Fire PvP talent Flamecannon. Reward and encourage the Mage for standing still, and put the onus on the Mage to do it. Also, buff up all spells baseline damage so that it doesn't feel like a punishment when we have to move.

That would be MoP RoP all over again. Nope, fuck that shit. Even hunters were pissed with their sniper training talent, why do you ever want to bring something like that back?

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It should be baseline.

Totally agree with that. I miss baseline MI so much

[Sosua]

Really, I don't understand the logic behind the qq about RoP. Yes it's not the best talent out there but at least requires a "small" amount of planning and correct positioning.

How do you plan getting jumped by a Rogue in BG's or World PvP?

[Obelisk Kai]

You are "locked down" (with the range of RoP i can't really call it "locked down") for literally 10 seconds per use. And you use it only at appropriate time (ideally) when you don't need to move at all, so it's a huge free damage boost.

Again, if you don't like it you simply can ignore it and pick whatever passive talent you want

No, you can't. Not if you play at in high end raids. You can't justify NOT taking a talent that is regarded as the best just because it is horrible gameplay.

You like Rune of Power. Fine. But you are also in a minority. Few talents are as vociferously hated as Rune of Power is by it's class, even the devs have commented on it in the past. The only talent that was disliked more was the horrific Prismatic Crystal and we also had that.

So, if there's even a small chance I will be compelled to use Rune of Power in BFA if it survives, I am going to argue for it's removal or at the very least it's restriction to Arcane for the duration of beta in order to prevent that from happening.

[Tiwack]

Never gonna use it, even if its the best shit. I will use Incanter's Flow (Or whatever its called). I wish they could just re-add the Evocation stuff from MoP, were you used Evocation (With no CD) to get a buff (dont remember 100% what it gave) and then recharge it once you got low on mana. That's the best Mage time, for me.

I'll second that. RoP is interesting but I sure hate the trade-offs playing with it brings.

[Swizzle]

That would be MoP RoP all over again. Nope, fuck that shit. Even hunters were pissed with their sniper training talent, why do you ever want to bring something like that back?

Because it would be better than what we had now. The damage buff would be from the Mage standing still, not tied to a fixed point on the ground. I would LOVE if they got rid of the idea altogether and give the bonus to Arcane specifically somehow, since that's what they always pictured the spec as (stand still turret style).

But if they insist on forcing the mechanic, I'd rather it just come from us not moving, and not being forced to hyper analyze every spot of ground on every fight and plan 15 minutes ahead to know if we can get back there again.

[davesignal]

How do you plan getting jumped by a Rogue in BG's or World PvP?

World PVP is dead in BFA. BGs are an extremely narrow use case, in which case you can take Incanter's Flow.