Mage Changes 1.11

Ivan

Didnt see this posted, apologies if it already has been.
P.s. You suck, Drake!

WoW Mage forums thread:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-mage&t=876760&p=1

Talent list, hosted on IGN:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/704/704665p1.html

Alot of whining about 6 second pyroblast, which I cant understand. All in all, I quite like the changes. The Arcane armour buff is a bit useless. I think I'll be Ice spec come 1.11

With this and Innervate buff, I'm a happy camper

Ivan

Cant seem to edit, as boards is too slow. Hope this goes through...
I meant to say that I quite like the new combustion, as well.

Also, link to talent calculator for 1.11:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?o

Kiith

it seems a hell of alot of mages (on the europe forums anyway) are seriously pissed off about these changes. lots of whining (which, i know, is an essential part of wow) and complaints.

never played a mage past lvl15 or so, so i cant really comment.

Ivan

Ice tree got a serious buff. I mean woah. My build for 1.11:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?kZEx0o0cZVAczhVot

/me drools.

sunzz

Ivan I don’t know why you are drooling this is an absolute disgrace, I’m a frost mage and there is nothing new there to me, the only thing we have been given is a higher rank food/water, whey. Blizz might as well up us to grade A vending machines.

Why you think any of the new talents add anything to this class I really don’t know, after playing my mage for a year I’m at my wits end now. We were the last to get a revamp, we have to share our revamp with another class, we also have to go and look for the info on a 3rd party site.

We are meant to be the main dps dealers in the game, or so was the general consensus at the start of the game, now I can't see myself doing more damage than any other class.

Glad I rolled a lock on outland last night.

never playing my mage again.

gg blizz

Ivan

I suppose its pretty relative. Ever since I rolled a mage, my first ever class, I've been arcane spec. Seemingly locked in for the need for Improved Arcane Explosion and Evocation, not to mention clearcasting and Improved Counter Spell.

Now that I dont need arcane for IAE and Evocation it no longer seems a necessity to me, to spec in it.

So, its easy for me to look at my long since desired frost tree and see the +50% crit chance to all spells, the buff to Ice barrier as well as the Master of Elements talent and see it all as a good thing.

In fairness though, I'm probably just biased due to innervate

Bartonprince

Doesn't matter what changes happen. Not everyone will ever be truly happy with them. Everyone hates Warlock, yet look at all the whinging on the forums about Undead Rogues etc..

Mages do need a buff though

Kiith

Bartonprince wrote:

Doesn't matter what changes happen. Not everyone will ever be truly happy with them. Everyone hates Warlock, yet look at all the whinging on the forums about Undead Rogues etc..

its a bit different here though, when compared to other classes patch's

when warlocks got their "uber" buff (even if it was only 1 spell change :rolleyes: ), most warlocks were delighted. when druids got their feral buff, most of them were happy enough (and now super happy with Innervate). priests got some damn sweet changes to their holy tree. hunters got their..i dont think buff is a big enough word for what they got, crazy mega buff maybe...but they were delighted (even if they did deserve it after so much suffering). most pally's seemed happy enough, even if they (we) did still whine all the time. i cant remember how the warrior, rogue or shammy patches were recieved (or even if their has been major changes since launch)

but most mages seem to think this buff to their class is total ****, and that blizzard havent listened to anything they had to say. thats the big difference, at least that i can see.

hopefully it will change, since its only pre-patch and the massive outcry from mages might, just might, change it.

Maximilian

Yeah, I've an epic specced frostie mage - couldn't be bothered leveling another char to 60 - and I think the review is total crap on the whole.

There's one or two nice things in there but not enough to overcome my utter disappointment. Arcane resiliance? Slightly improved Amp/dampen magic? Wand Specialisation still? Arcane sublety nerf? Arcane Power nerf (again)?Blizzard have been sniffing glue.

Basically, they have given two essential spells without talents and freed up a lot of talent points to spend in other crap talents. No proper increase in DPS or survivability, so many other classes continue to equal us for damage or better and with better survivability to boot.

It looks as though the Mage class is broken & Blizzard have no idea how to fix it and no desire to either. They even chicken out of revealing the changes themselves and farm it out to IGN.

I signed up for a glass cannon. Instead I got a glass water cooler with an air rifle. Oh well.

I feel better now. [/rant]

sunzz

Ivan not to take a dig but if you say you've specced arcane..

Any way im not going to whine any more this is a joke and unless its changed I certainly wont be play my mage, uill just quote what one person has said and he seems to know what he's talking about + it saves me writing an essay on why this is ****e.

Frost to me is worse, we still need to get ICS, i mean without it do we even have a chance.

**** OFF BLIZZARD.

This will probably be lost in the hundred pages to come but here goes:

Nerfs:

Arcane subtlety only affects crits now which if you read it and read what it used to be you can see that more clearly.

Wand Specialization - cmon now... lets give warriors bow specialization! Not really a nerf but completely absurd.

Improved Arcane explosion - went from being required to being USELESS crits on a spell that does 300 damage is a joke, 5% of 300 damage means 315 damage in the long run and since it is instant cast that means the benefits it gets from +damage gear are minimal.

Arcane Resilience - 200 armor in talent points, sweet? laughable, spend talent points here?

Arcane Power - NERF in damage and no bonus to duration!

Improved Fireward - No one ever used it before so why not nerf it!

Combustion - Again, no one ever really spent a talent here before and they still won't a 10% chance to crit with 3 spells.. Not worth that 31 point, especially since I am betting its a 5 minute cooldown.

Ice had the biggest nerfs-
blizzard had a buff, speed is reduced and duration increased... doesn't really matter since its a channeling spell (duration wise). Toss the dog a bone!

No more frost ward --- No one hardly used it anyways but it coulda been useful in an ice zone.

The biggest nerf that pissed me off was shatter, nerfed from 50% chance to crit on frozen targets to 10%... geez thanks.

Winters chill still pretty weak which simply falls in to the same ol thing blizzard has had mages doing since the start, spam your frost bolts. I mean lets get real, you have to get this to proc (if you put 5 points then its a 100% proc but still) then it will put a debuff on the person to get a 1% crit, stackable to 5 times. In pvp if I don't kill most people in less than 5 hits then I am more or less dead. That is.. if I even get 5 frost bolts off. In raiding, it is atleast semi-useful... A molten giant takes me about 5 or 6 frost bolts before its dead. The other part of this is the fact that you have to pretty much spam your frost bolts in order to keep 5 up there (like on bosses) and if you stop for more than a few seconds then they start wearing off immediately.

Things blizzard missed out on entirely. Silence lasts 4 seconds, a felhunter pet lasts 2 times as long and requires absolutely no talent point cost to get. You are still required to go deep in arcane for silence.

There needed to be more involvement in the casting instead of just spamming one button (frost bolt) over and over. They didn't touch that.

Damage got nerfed more than anything with reductions in crits (frost) and reduction in arcane power. Warriors and rogues continue to go up in damage with improved weapons while mages stay relatively stationary, this could be an item problem but if you examine the rogue talents for example they get a lot more increases to damage, level 1 talents already meaning 1% crit! Vile Posions means 15% increase in posion damage (compare it to our best of 10% in fire or 6% in frost) or how about Opportunity, slap on 20% damage for backstab!

We didn't get anything with agro reductions nor did we see any big improvements to taking a fire/frost build save for something that reduces mana on crits.

Improvements were fewer but some still noticable, so that you guys don't just take me as a complainer. Master of Elements, just to go back on the last comment, is pretty nice but anything that reduces mana is again, just a bone. I want damage not mana, give the warlocks mana, but hey, I will take it with a half smile, atleast we got something that crosses elements.

Also got our wish, arcane explosion is no longer required 5 talent point sink and evocation the same way.
____________________________________________________________________________

If you put it to a vote i guarentee that the mages would choose to keep their talents the way they are. You didn't fix anything save one complaint that mages have had forever. Do you even listen to the player base? I am not looking to one shot warriors, I am looking for ways to do better sustained dps.

---

Insert clever phrase here.

DRakE

bit of a mega nerf really

but on the plus side, last two patches i've gotten two free respecs with my priest and now my mage

Bartonprince

Maybe something to increase Mages health would be good. As a lot of 60 mages (unless really well decked out) have like 3k health or under. Now i understand that they do a lot of damage and have to be dealt with quickly, but that is simply not enough HP. In BG's etc, they just go down so quickly. Although if i see one casting, and i'm just coming into range, i know i'm probably dead.

Epicpriest

sunzz wrote:

Ivan I don’t know why you are drooling this is an absolute disgrace, I’m a frost mage and there is nothing new there to me, the only thing we have been given is a higher rank food/water, whey. Blizz might as well up us to grade A vending machines.

Why you think any of the new talents add anything to this class I really don’t know, after playing my mage for a year I’m at my wits end now. We were the last to get a revamp, we have to share our revamp with another class, we also have to go and look for the info on a 3rd party site.

We are meant to be the main dps dealers in the game, or so was the general consensus at the start of the game, now I can't see myself doing more damage than any other class.

Glad I rolled a lock on outland last night.

never playing my mage again.

gg blizz

They won't mess Mage up anymore. You can see from the game forums that they are looking at threads etc, they will make some changes to that and give at least 1 nice imba change. i think.... they couldn't be stupid enough to give useless changes like they are thinking of... could they?"?

Funky

You people are crazy.

So what if Imp AE isn't worth getting for the crit.. guess what you still just got 5 talent points freed you never had before.

Shatter now gives crit for ALL SPELLS not just frost. That is incredibly good(and I'm pretty sure will lead to the next big duel spec 21/11/19). They always said they weren't gonna change the mages trees much and thats exactly what happened. They made the trees more compact and you get more for your talents.

They also made the elementalist spec pretty damn good, permafrost is deceptively good combined with fire talents. You won't be constantly spamming frost spells to keep people chilled. With blastwave, and CoC you pretty much keep melee indefinitely crippled. These changes are pretty amazing in my opinion, and are a great step away from the 3 minute hero mages. Mages who actually have a bit of skill are gonna profit.

sunzz

bartonprice wrote:

Maybe something to increase Mages health would be good. As a lot of 60 mages (unless really well decked out) have like 3k health or under. Now i understand that they do a lot of damage and have to be dealt with quickly, but that is simply not enough HP. In BG's etc, they just go down so quickly. Although if i see one casting, and i'm just coming into range, i know i'm probably dead

Im sorry but are you seriously trying to annoy me more, not that I could be.The whole problem about this patch is the fact that we HAVE ABSOLOUTE UTTER ****E DPS. war/rogues/locks all do more damage than us, however they all have what we don't have something to control aggro.

We are meant to be AoE specialists, anyone wanna tell me what happens to a mage when he nova/coc/blizz a mob in any instance, oh wait he dies unless people take aggro and he/she get mega healed.

Barton the only decent thing we got was the no aggro on criting in arcane, however we still need to spec 17 points in arcane to get ICS. witout it we have nothing against casters.

Yea and blizz i can remember the last time I was sitting down to remana, and taking 1min to remana 6k only to think, ffs, I really need a rank7 food. not like its mana regen i need faster, ****ing retards.

Ivan

Sunzz, I am arc/fire 21/22 at level 52, specced for PvE.

Yes, its true, we didnt get any extra survivability. Except maybe Ice Barrier, which looks much improved. But nothing for Arcane or fire, which is really the problem with mages, for alot of people.

I really do like the new shatter, which Sunzz, adds 50% to all spells crit chance against frozen targets. Which is quite improved on the frost spells only, of pre-1.11

And I am a big fan of the ice block, though never having used it

Anyway, I look forward to this and the inevitable arrival of invisibility come the expansion.

sunzz

Bern how can you say this is not bad, frost has been nerfd. The arcane tree is totally irrelevant 50% chance not to agro with critical strikes is the only worth thing in the tree yet we still need to spend 17 talent points in it to get counterspell, without ICS we have no chance whatsoever against casters, whats the cool down on shield bash/shock/kick, allot less than 30seconds.
YES WAND SPECIALIZATION FTW.

Combustion 100% chance to crit as a 31-talent point now 10%. Amazing.

I like the fact that shatter effects all spells.

It’s the simple fact for a whole year the only things mages have been annoyed about is

****e dps with regards most other classes when we are meant to be the main dps dealers in the game or at least we were.

Absolute joke at being the only class in the game not to have a way of getting agro off ourseleves, It's really nice being asked to an instance only to aoe and have mass agro on you immediately. And with a ****e healer you die more than average and the repair bills are a joke

And excessive downtime, what do they do for this, RANK 7 Food. RANK 7 WATER PLZ. Make us more of a vending machine plz.

We are annoyed that it has taken one year to get a review and when we finally get it the three things that we all wanted have been overlooked ignorantly.

Dps.
Aggo.
Downtime.

Ivan

Um, talent reviews dont work like that. You basically get one of three choices. You dont get ALL the choices.

I must admit, I dislike the aggro problems we have now, atm. Which is why I'm spec'ing Frost come 1.11

As for ICS, I dont understand, if you feel you need it, then get it. PoM is a decent ability as well, so go for broke. But to say that MAGES_NEED_ICS to defeat casters is just ridiculous.

Dps, overall could use a little work, considering the scalability of +damage to +heal items, not to mention vs. warrior/rogue eq as well. But that seems to me, to be more an item problem than a talent one.

I'm not really sure know what you mean by down time here but there is simultaneously a reason why we get the conjure water ability and not a spirit tap/divine spirit style power.

I think the Arcane skill tree has been nerfed, but I also believe it to be comparable to the Druid innervate issue.

The arcane talents Evocation and IAE were so fundamental to most mage builds, that very little could actually live up to it. With that said the armour for int ability is shíte, if its true that the max bonus is roughly 200 armour.

All in all, my only real qualms are lack of aggro management/Crowd Control abilities in the class in general and this mainly stems from playing other classes and just being spoiled.

And Sunzz, I'm not sure if you are misreading the combustion spell or deliberately trying to make it look worse than it is, but it basically gives 3 criticals with fire spells. Albeit, incredibly unreliably, which is understandable.

Anyway, I'll see how the changes play, before final judgement.

Funky

I dunno, guess I can't really contradict mages I haven't played one till 60 or at endgame. But all I know is what I've heard from mages in my guild, a couple in particular who are really damn good, and they're pretty excited about the patch. At first they thought it sucked but as they talked about it and played around with specs they changed their minds. So I guess we'll see what happens post-patch, we can only really theorycraft right now.

But about ICS, I think it's overrated. I know it gives you a window to say frost nova and silence someone long enough to get off a spell but the real killer in my experience is the 10 second silence from interrupting a spell. ICS seems more like a crutch than anything else to me.

NeoSlicerZ

The arcane tree truely sucks now, PoM and AP are the only things that truely stand out, and the talents to get them suck. ICS is a crutch, that is all, if you don't have it that means you're elemental pretty much, you don't NEED to CS people just to sheep them then prepare a long cast spell. The Shatter buff and frostbite? move to tier 2 is unbelievable, you have the ability to control when you crit, FN, CoC/BW/FB, all crit, why are you complaining? Currently when I play a 60 mage, I have great fun, it requires a lot of precision/timing and just a bit of awareness.


Just noticed, as for dps. You already have massive dps, your problem is that along with warlocks, you have no aggro dump.

Downtime? You got evocation as a core ability.

chomsky

All in all, it's an undeniably stupid and pointless revamp.

Chomsky 60 mage

DRakE

Ivan wrote:

And I am a big fan of the ice block, though never having used it

Anyway, I look forward to this and the inevitable arrival of invisibility come the expansion.

Give invis!


Yeah i'm also a big fan of the iceblock, even though i've never specc'd for it, it prevents dura loss !

DRakE

two changes i just thoguht off after postnig that last reply..


instead of 50% of int= armour make it +dmg and make evocation 5 minutes cooldown!

wait a week..

NERF MAGES!

Ivan

a +50% int talent or something wouldnt hurt, I suppose. Oh and an improved Evocation, as you say.

It is a little underwhelming, but I really think the possibility for some great Elemental mages are finally there...

DeVore

Still looking for ANYTHING that makes me feel magical rather then simply "artillery" which is what my guild calls the mages. We stand and point and stuff gets hit (usually)". Sheeping things is not exactly a wizardly thing to do, noone really needs our ports all that much nor are they generally all #that# useful and beyond that, I dont think we have a solitary thing that sets us aside from say, a rocket-launcher unit.

Even an invis that you cant attack from would be nice.

As for the DMG stats etc, that just strengthens my point, Mages are Excel In Fantasyland. We just optimise our DMG output. And make water.

Finally, Instances and Raids later on really cramp the Mages style unless they are allowed to AOE. AOEing in an instance in my guild = auto degroup. Dunno about you guys...

DeV.

Funky

Well in fairness do you want encounters made with some of your obscure abilities in mind or something?

Mages are a DPS class, and that's what they do in raids. Their DPS is fine, though lacking some aggro control which is being dealt with in kind at the moment.

If you're talking about outside of raids I don't know what else they could give you, you have alot more diversity than say a priest(took this example because I play one). You have quite a few CC spells from roots, to snares(which will be insane post-patch) to straight up polymorphing people. Counterspell, which untalented is probably the most effective interrupt there is. A short range teleport which is basically a PvP trinket every 15 seconds... Talents offer pretty different specs, especially post-patch. Invisibility would be pretty retarded in almost any form I'm sorry We'll see come hero classes.

And to deal with AOE? What kind of instances are you talking about here? I understand in raids that there's limited opportunities to AE, but in 5 Mans and 20 Mans(maybe not so much AQ20, more ZG) AEing your way through is the fastest possible way to do it, and viable if your healers can keep up. That's short sightedness in your guild not your class falling short of what it could be.

Ivan

Mages dps is horrid. Druids, shadow priests warlocks 2 levels below me and even the tanking warrior out dps me, atm.

Its just silly. The only times I really get to shine is with AoE damage and in order to be "practical" I have to spec up to Improved Arcane Explosion.

But I get what dev is saying, at least I think I do... we dont really seem magical. We just look towards something, wait 2-3.5 seconds and it takes damage, rinse and repeat. It just seems... a little, unspectacular, I guess.

Anyway, there are a few minor things that I'll still require before I'll be completely happy with my mage but I think the 1.11 patch is a small step in the right direction.

Funky

Sorry but I find it hard to believe you're getting out dps'd by druids, MAYBE the other 2, shadow priests excel at single target dps but can't AE at all.

Ivan

This was all in the one group last night, in BRD. I'm only 55 atm...
The druid was 54 and in moonkin form. We both had the 3% crit bonus so that wasnt it. I was just a bit below the druid in terms of dps of course that changed when I had to start AoE'ing.

In the same day and place another 58 druid feral spec was outdamaging me. He had some crazy good feral leather piece that he said cost him 400g. But he completely blew me away in terms of damage continuing to outdamage me even after we had started AoE'ing. Lets face it, there are very few classes out there that cant out dps a mage, ok maybe a paladin, a druid once epics enter the equation. Trust me, its a short list.

Funky

Dunno what you're doing wrong, the top mages I play with come behind only 2 rogues with ridiculous gear and a GM fury warrior in damage.

Ivan

BTW, further changes to mage. Seems the talent review is still ongoing

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-mage&T=918906&P=1

Also, I heard some random guy say on the forums that the 1.11 change was coming in next tuesday. Anyone can that confirm or deny this? It seems incredibly contrary to what I've heard so far, with regard to a release date, but the optimist in me wants it to be true!

Anyway, they switched frostbite with improved frost nova, a minor issue for me but a welcome change. They've added threat reduction to all the trees ala Arcane Subtlety (back to just arcane threat reduction) with burning soul and frost channelling now bout adding a threat reduction for their specific spell schools.

And the new +% to hit talent seems utterly pointless, considering most "experts" claim +3% to hit is sufficient to ensure constant hits in PvP and +6% is sufficient for raids/PvE. Since this numbers are easily attainable with standard eq, whats the point? Still, I guess its ok for a tier one talent that affects both fire and ice spells.

Which really only leaves

Magic Absorption - Ranks 5 - When you resist a spell, you regain 1/2/3/4/5% of your max. mana and increases all resistances by 2/4/6/8/10 edit New ability

Which I am still undecided upon. It takes alot to make my view away from Arcane concentration (when I am spec'ing arcane) even for just a second, which is saying something I guess. But I still dont think its enough to make a mage choose this over concentration for anything other than a specific raid build, and even then...

Anyway, at least this shows they are listening to the deafening yells from poor mages. Alas though, they've still pretty much ignored the universal plea, nay expectation, for more survivability.