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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsMage's evocation: working as intended?
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jul 5th 2007 at 1:05PM
We feel evocate is working as it is intended: it's simply highly dependent on how much spirit the mage has. Unfortunately, many mages seem not to like spirit that much and would rather spend their gem slots and enchants on other stats. This is fine, everyone has the freedom to choose what stats they want to focus on. Whereas in the past we forced a lot of spirit onto the mage's tier sets so that they would have good mana regen, to leave more room for flexibility and choice we have replaced a lot of that spirit with gem slots in recent gear.
Mages, on the other hand, say that to maximize their DPS and justify their use in a raid, they're required to stack gear and gems that eschew spirit and add to their spell damage, thereby rendering Evocation useless. But if they want decent returns from Evocation, and enough mana regeneration to keep them going in long fights, they have to sacrifice their spot on the damage charts in order to equip more spirit gear. To this Aeus responds:
No one's asking anyone to gimp themselves; just making it clear that choices have to be made when it comes to certain aspects.
So, Mages, what do you think? Is Evocation working as intended -- or does it just not give Mages these days enough staying power if they're trying to keep to the top of the DPS charts?
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
Ryan Jul 5th 2007 4:10PM
Mages whining again. Sigh. Go play an elemental/resto shaman and learn what mana issues are really all about.
Azshanas Jul 5th 2007 4:28PM
The complaining mages need to be happy they have evocation as it can only be use on themselves. Us druids have to give up our mana regen spell to healers in raids. Granted, I'm happy to do so if it means the raid doesn't wipe.
Menawa Jul 5th 2007 4:29PM
My mage is still in the mid 30's, but here's my $.02:
If you can choose either evocation/mana regen gear for long fights, or uber facemelting pwnt gear for short fights, then does the dps work out about the same? (ie is it just a matter of when the damage is dealt) or is it reduced by the spirit gear.(Less damage dealt) If its the same (or better!) then this IS a bunch of mages QQing because they aren't the better than everyone else, but if its option number two then they might have a legitamate concern.(it also depends where these numbers actually come in compared with other classes, it doesn't matter how much evoc. sucks if your better than everyone without it!)
Aikiwoce Jul 5th 2007 4:37PM
Being a mage I'm slightly biased as far as evocation goes.
I use the Staff of Divine Infusion w/+20 spirit enchant and a lvl 68 wand of spirit and item rack. While I would love a whole mana pool back from evocate I can understand why the devs don't want that. I generally use evocate only if I messed up the potion/mana gem timing, and then only to regen enough mana to wait out the rest of the potion/gem cooldown.
I think the best solution to the problem would be to scale the mana gems to be 75%-125% (depends on if they keep them BoP) of the equivalent healthstone. Remove the wand spec talent or arcane fortitude(both are useless), replace it with an improved mana gem talent. They could also throw in an Evocation rank 2 that has the same effect as rank 1 but increases your spirit for the duration of the spell by 10-50% of your intellect(I'm not a real numbers sort of guy).
Also giving mages a water summoning well and a mana gem summoning ritual(for the non-mages to get mana gems) would go a long way to quelling mage concerns.
I don't think these few additions would unbalance the class too severely.
P.S. Remove the hidden 10% damage nerf to frost/fire already!
Aikiwoce Jul 5th 2007 4:54PM
Oh hey, I forgot to add (just wanted to play devil's advocate):
If the Curator or Aran can regenerate a full mana pool through regeneration then why can't my mage?
Also I remember reading somewhere that if you wanted to regen 10k mana while evocating you'd need 600+ spirit. It also sucks that evocation ignores MP5.
That's all for now.
P.S. Remove the hidden 10% damage nerf to frost/fire already!
Aikiwoce Jul 5th 2007 4:55PM
Doh, I meant evocation not regeneration.
sloegin Jul 5th 2007 6:06PM
My Evo's at lvl 60 got me 100% of my mana pool back.
My Evo's at lvl 70 give me 40% of my pool back; 50% if I load up on spirit stats.
To non-mages, I'm curious: List your class talents or cooldowns that work half as well at 70 as they did at 60.
Baluki Jul 5th 2007 6:10PM
This whole game is built on trade-offs. You can't have great mana efficiency AND do assloads of damage at the same time.
Your solution is simple: keep a set of uber-damage gear and a set of mana-regen gear. Swap pieces in and out before the fight as necessary. And like everyone else said, get a crap staff with a ton of Spirit on it and enchant it.
Don't enchant your damage items with regen enchants - enchant them with damage enchants. Get yourself a good regen item and enchant THAT with regen enchants.
Take me, for example. On my Elemental shaman, I have a decent belt that gives me a lot of +dmg and +crit. I also carry the Tarren Mill Defender's Cinch (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29319) which has 12mp5 and 2 red sockets. So I stuck 2 BLUE MP5 gems in it. Now I get 16mp5 out of just one item. I don't use it on short fights, but on long ones, I'll put it on.
Remember, nobody cares what your DPS is if the boss doesn't die.
Dontrike Jul 27th 2007 3:13PM
At 44 cause I just want to answer his question.
Power Word: Shield and Inner Fire.
Pzychotix Jul 5th 2007 8:09PM
As a moonkin, my innervate gives me 3k mana. QQ more please. At least you also get free mana gems, which by the way aren't even on the same cooldown as mana potions.
And don't give me crap about how moonkins don't matter. DPS is still DPS, and I can dole it out just the same.
Nyctanessa Jul 5th 2007 9:09PM
"As a moonkin, my innervate gives me 3k mana. QQ more please. At least you also get free mana gems, which by the way aren't even on the same cooldown as mana potions."
QFT. I play both a moonkin and a frost mage, and personally, I'd trade in Innervate for Evocation/mana gems.
SaxxonPike Jul 5th 2007 11:44PM
Druid and warrior claim Evocation works as intended. Mage disagrees. Warlock could not be reached for comment.
HiWay Jul 5th 2007 11:44PM
Make water!
Drink water!
profit!
HiWay Jul 5th 2007 11:44PM
Make water!
Drink water!
profit!
HiWay Jul 5th 2007 11:46PM
Make water!
Drink water!
= profit!
HiWay Jul 5th 2007 11:46PM
wow, that was some serious lag, triple post...sorry
TotalBiscuit Jul 6th 2007 1:57AM
Mage since day one, as some may be aware.
Evocation is fine, seriously. This 'problem' has existed since launch. Spirit is a stat that mages hate, it's really that simple, since it only serves one purpose. With the advent of Molten Armour, that effect has been magnified, since it is a very powerful reason not to utilise Mage armour, which of course made spirit more useful (allowing 30% of mana-regen to continue while casting, this is of course heavily spirit-dependent).
Now as per usual this has caused certain 'elements' of the mage community to throw their toys out of the pram. Apologies must go to all, there are splinters of our class community that are very good at whining..
Now, here's the facts. Real mages know the score. They know that mage-specific gear is itemized with spirit on it. I cite as my example the Harbinger Bands from Attumen in comparison with the Bands of Nefarious Deeds from the Maiden of Virtue. Equivelant level gear, let's take a look at the stats.
Harbinger Bands
+21 Stamina
+21 Intellect
+14 Spirit
26 damage
Bands of Nefarious Deeds
+27 Stamina
+22 Intellect
32 damage.
Now, you have to make a choice. See, for a warlock, that spirit isn't going to help you. It's not lock gear. A shadow-priest isn't going to much care for it either, he's his own mana-battery. So who's it for? Well mages of course. So you take a small hit as regards to damage and stamina, ok, fair enough. What do you gain? A stronger evocation.
Aeus was right, it's about choice. As of now I'm sitting on relatively decent gear. Some of that has spirit on it (my Harbinger Bands, my T4 mage gloves). Sitting on 179 spirit. However, I can enhance that by up to +90 extra spirit without compromising my dps at all. How? It's quite simple. Every mage worth his salt has a couple of things in his toolbox and any mage that doesn't know about them needs to rethink his class choice.
Evoc gear.
As you're well aware you can change weapons during fights. This includes your wand as well. So go and acquire the following.
A Staff of Divine Infusion. Cheap thing, you can pick it up for about 40g on the AH. It's got 50 spirit on it. Now go and enchant it with +20 spirit. Bit expensive, but worthwhile in the longrun. Now, camp the AH until someone puts a green +spirit wand up, buy it. You can expect it to range somewhere between 20 and 25 at high levels. Voila. Now simply setup a mod such as Itemrack to change gear when you evocate, or use a macro, or even manually switch over. Expect your mana-bar to pretty much fill as a result.
Now, I really do think people are over-reacting on this issue. Question is, do you NEED that extra mana? Are you going OOM that much? You need to consider perhaps just how hard you're nuking, or what spec you're using. If 10/48/3 is burning you too hard then your gear clearly isn't good enough. Try frost, or arcane-support fire/frost, find yourself free of mana issues until you get some better gear.
As a raiding mage with Day 1 experience, I can safely say, this is a mountain conjured out of a molehill. Please excuse my whiney brethren.
TB.
Party baby Jul 6th 2007 3:59AM
The places where you need to use evocation are most likely places where you are buffed. Priest spirit, food buff = 70 spirit. BoK/MotW/BoW perhaps, they all raise your regen.
Having well over 200 regen on these raids should not be an issue (200 regen = 4800 mana). Even for mages that have no spirit on any of their gear. If you are still not happy? Go get some 2-3 green items with high spirit on it, it does not necessarily need to be a staff or wand although you wanna keep a check on your stamina when you switch. You don't wanna take too much health off but in a raid a small heal is easy to score. You should be able to crack up to 250 regen and get 6K mana. As far as I am concerned the evocation for mages is not an issue. I think most mages don't consider this an issue. However raising the issue by Blizz was a perfect opportunity to lash out. Because seriously. No skilled mage will ever bother about spirit on their gear. If spirit happens to be on gear, excellent. Tiers have them and it is useful, however no skilled mage will sacrifice int, stam, dmg, crit or hit to boost their spirit.
Fai Jul 6th 2007 4:27AM
I think it's kind of important for us mages to realise that we're in fact the ones to blame for the lesser evocation.
Mage forums have been going "wtf more spirit? i don't want spirit!" on the forums for over a year. We didn't want spirit on our tier sets (waste of item budget!!!). We wanted damage, crit, int, stam. And that's what we got. Exactly what we asked for.
Noone ever realised the spirit was actually needed because we got what it needed to do (useful evocation) because blizz forced the spirit gear on us - you were gonna have spirit whether you wanted to or not.
Now we don't get the spirit automatically most people will just dismiss spirit stats when looking if something's an upgrade or not. The numbers must go, up, all numbers must go up... except spirit. Spirit is for noobs. So well.. deal with the consequences.
All this being said, is it worth sacrificing other stats for spirit? First of all look at your spell rotation, and make sure to watch for those clearcasts when you get them to make the best of it. Second look at how long a fight is gonna last, start using the smallest mana regen gem you can use in that fight first - and use it as soon as you used the amount of mana it's gonna restore. Same goes with mana pots - use them as soon as you used the amount of mana they restore, don't wait until you're almost-but-not-quite-yet oom. The same goes for evocation of course, and make sure you do it at a point where there's no chance it'll get interrupted by some aoe effect (yes, i've seen people do it) (*cough* maybe i did it too, but it was just once, i promise ^^).
If all this fails, and you're not a lucky bastard that can get a shadow priest or a shammy with a mana regen totem in their group, then you might wanna see how long the fight goes on when you're oom and how much damage you could have done in that time with a bit less damage, a bit more spirit gear.
And no, I didn't forget, I just put it at the end because, of course, it scales with spirit: mage armor instead of molten armor can make the difference .
CursedLight Jul 6th 2007 11:45AM
As a lvl'ing mage, I found probably 5 or 6 useful post out of this whole mess. #53 and #55 really sums it up. I'm sure I'll be looking out for +spirit gear as I admit I am one of those mages that solely focuses on +dmg/+crit. At 63, my evo restores about 40% mana only, which is enough to get out of a bad pull.
The moral here: just live with the blizzard decisions, stack up on +spirit weapons, swap out, evocate, swap out again. Also, like #55 said, use those gems and pots as soon as your mana pool has room to receive it. Don't wait until the end.