Patch 1.11: Mage Changes Announced!
by Elizabeth Harper 
May 4th 2006 at 2:40PM
Blizzard has released an official look at
the mage improvements. It does, as expected, include Arcane Explosion as an instant-cast spell by default and
Evocation as a trainable skill at level 20. As to the rest of the changes? Well, I may not have played a
mage far enough to make a judgment call, but none of them seem overwhelming. Any opinions out there?[Thanks, Silvertusk]
Filed under: Mage, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
dj May 4th 2006 2:50PM
http://pc.ign.com/articles/704/704665p1.html
All the hype and nothing. Not even a mention of invisibility. No agro dispelling spells either. Its a really disappointing review.
Klatz May 4th 2006 3:01PM
The shatter-crit mage is now a things of the past. Frost PVE got a buff while Frost PVP (at least for burst damage) got crit'd by the nerf bat.
Smoke May 4th 2006 3:14PM
It's official. Blizzard hates mages.
You see the new talent to add 50% of total intellect to AC. WHAT A JOKE!
Brad May 4th 2006 3:27PM
Imp CS is still in tier 4, we still have to spend a bunch of point in arcane in order to get to this talent. CS should have been made Imp CS by defualt.
dax May 4th 2006 3:43PM
Wasn't there supposed to be some kind of help to downtime for mages in this thing?
I really don't see my build changing in the least. (Well, I won't be taking the 50% armor thing) You still have to go 2 points into tier 4 Arc and I still plan on spending everything else in fire.(I don't really raid) Sadly, I don't see my downtime going very far down or my damage going up much.
jpc May 4th 2006 4:45PM
You can't have expected imp. counterspell to move up in the tree. That has to be low on the tree. You already get a school silence, without any talents at all. I don't see how you can complain about that. Priests have to get to shadow tier 4 to get any silence at all.
Ty May 4th 2006 4:46PM
Yeah, fairly disappointing.
I think their "downtime fix" is this:
Master of Elements
Your Fire and Frost spell criticals will refund 10/20/30% of their base mana cost.
Alright, the thing that is supposed to keep us up and moving is based on random chance and, refunds less than 1/3rd of a spell.
Whoo hoo.
Joanus May 4th 2006 4:52PM
wow... thats all i can say... wtf is blizzard thinking... mages needed help, not nerfing... what happened to frost!?!? arcane is crap, and combustion no longer has a 100% crit chance... no tree is worth specializing in... i hate blizzard... im going talentless!
nitewaker May 4th 2006 4:55PM
Oh man, what a disappointment
The shatter nerf is terrible.
They said fire and ice would be more compatable
How is it if imp CS is tier 4, thats a vital spell
Why don't they just save us all time and delete the mage?
Klatz May 4th 2006 5:03PM
The apparent shatter nerf was a typo. Check the updated shatter description
Shatter
Requires 3 points in Frostbite
Increases the critical strike chance of all your spells against frozen targets by 10/20/30/40/50%.
Note: Updated.
drkliter May 4th 2006 6:01PM
freeing up two talent points is good but i dont even want to think about who is gonna put points in the armor buff talent. blizzard would never put in a aggro dispelling spell in the game, it would take all the fun out of the game and become the i win button. i think with combustion they want to have more sustained dps from mages. however i dont see that as an advantage in pvp. maybe we will see why they made that change when rogues get their change(higher frontloading dmg).
Silvertusk May 4th 2006 11:12PM
You're welcome, Elizabeth! ;3
P.S., you should possibly update this - IGN is competent and got a lot of mistranslations. Redirect people to the mage forum for some clarification.
Also, here's a talent calculator with the most recently known updates:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent
phk975 May 5th 2006 2:42AM
Shatter got a great buff. All spells now have critical chance increased, not just frost spells.
PvP and AoE mages rejoice! Elementalists rejoice!
vacamuerta May 5th 2006 1:02PM
Um, I think the downtime reduction is the free evocation for all trees..
crsh May 5th 2006 1:38PM
Wow, I don't play a mage anymore, but that review can definitely be filed in the "underwhelming" category; coming from a rogue, and how Blizz also hates rogues at this point and has no vision for that class either, I'm scared of our upcoming review.
ScaryMage May 5th 2006 2:26PM
New worst ever talent: Arcane Resilience, so if you're 60th level and you have 400int, you get a +200armor buff?? Mages don't worry about armor, they worry about aggro. 200 armor makes very little difference in damage reduction.
My 60th lvl mage is fire/arcane and I don't really lose anything but gain a few abilities such as Master of Elements.
Arcane Subtlety is interesting, -50% aggro on crits will help crit-happy mages from pulling aggro off tanks. Master of Elements also helps the critically-inclined. To people who say crit-happy mages die a lot, I say they don't know good mages. Good fire mages will learn to ramp up their damage. I use arcane missles (-40% threat currently)/frost bolts early in the fight (after 2-3sunders), then ramp up to fireballs (+6% crit strike) to finish off the boss/elite. Towards the end of the fight, either A) your half decent tank will have a good aggro grip on the boss/elite or you don't care about aggro because you can finish it off with a couple of more spells.
Originally I re-specced from almost all fire to fire/arc because I wanted:
Instant Arc Exp
Evocation
Presence of Mind
I still say Presence of Mind/Pyroblast is the bomb, much better than the old Combustion which I had to drop to respec but now I'm basically putting 21 points into the Arcane tree just to get PoM. It makes me want to respec to Fire/Ice now (with Arcane Subtlety). Shatter sounds extremely tempting.
Oh yeah, the new combustion is pretty powerful as well.
The old combustion wasn't much use with a 5min cooldown and a chance to be resisted. It shined in conjunction with blast wave though.
Its pretty early to judge the effect of these changes. I *think* they may just make the class more interesting to play.
Lmao6 May 6th 2006 9:33PM
Shatter
Requires 3 points in Frostbite
Increases the critical strike chance of all your spells against frozen targets by 10/20/30/40/50%.
Note: Updated.
Frostbite
Gives your Chill effects a 5/10/15% chance to freeze the target for 5 seconds.
Note: Previously a Rank 6 item. Was also previously five increments of 3%. Two more skill points freed up. Winter's Chill moved to Rank 6, with adjusted functionality.
Master of Elements
Your Fire and Frost spell criticals will refund 10/20/30% of their base mana cost.
Note: This is a new ability and, interestingly, affects more than one talent tree.
Wtih these 3 talents how can i run our of mana?? shoot a frost bolt, they freeze, do some instant casts and i get all my mana back.
Diesel Fire May 8th 2006 12:44PM
as i see it, arcane specced mages have always gotten the shaft when it comes to items and bonuses. you always see +fire and +ice, but rarely a +arcane bonus. i thought the current trees for mage talents were fairly well done to begin with. i liked how you could individualize your toon with the three trees, but i think with 1.11 we'll see a lot of the same mage running around now.
vacamuerta May 8th 2006 6:17PM
#18: re: +Arcane gear
It's all over the place. My druid is kited out with 100% +arcane gear, about +150 damage. Also the idea with the review is that you have a choice in whether or not you take arcane--before everyone was fire/arcane or ice/arcane. Now we're got potential fire/ice builds since the "essential" arcane talents have been freed up. Even more attactive now is the fire/ice/arcane build! It should be interesting.
Also, combustion got an awesome buff! It basically guarantees 3 crits after activation, as opposed to the questionable single crit every 5 minutes. Let's see what the cooldown is now..
Kyenna May 9th 2006 10:00AM
I love my mage and it doesnt really need nerfing or a boost, i can't understand all the whinging. I have 31 arc/20 fire and I absolutely own battlegrounds and nothing comes close to my crits. What's the problem?