Mage changes in Wrath beta build 8885
by Alex Ziebart 
Aug 30th 2008 at 3:30PM
- Hot Streak has been changed. After two Fireball, Scorch or Frostfire Bolt crits in a row, you have a 33/66/100% chance for your next Pyroblast within 10 seconds to be an instant cast.
- Improved Scorch now does the exact same thing as Winter's Chill. Yay?
- Improved Water Elemental now makes your Elemental regen mana to all party or raid members equal to 0.2/0.4/0.6% of their total mana every 5 seconds.
- Fingers of Frost now lasts 15 seconds, but only affects you next two frost spells.
- Slow received a straight buff, reducing movement speed by 60%, and increasing casting time and time between ranged attacks by 60%, all up from its original 50%.
- Focus Magic now buffs the entire raid's damage.
The new Hot Streak seems like it will get a lot more play than its previous form, and the Improved Scorch debuff is just unusual. I know they're trying to homogenize some buffs and debuffs, but really? Really? Two debuffs that do the exact same thing and don't stack, both belonging to the same class? I'm not sure I understand! Fingers of Frost will prove to be a nice change. It will lend itself better to actual regular use now, compared to the old version 4 second version which would become a frantic game of "spam Ice Lance as much as possible." The Improved Water Elemental change brings it a little more in line with the mana regenerated through the new Replenishment mechanic. The two Arcane changes are more or less straight buffs. I approve.
Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, Talents, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jewbanks Aug 30th 2008 3:40PM
I feel like arc is still going to be a very mangled spec to raid with.. I just cant wrap my mind around how youre supposed to pump max dps out of it in a pve setting.. and I love arc o thats sad for me
Dryssa Aug 30th 2008 3:50PM
The Improved Scorch change seems weird, but it's actually a good change because all 3 trees are now self-sufficient, not relying on another mage to do good DPS. If Imp. Scorch and Winter's Chill stacked, deep fire mages and arcane mages wouldn't be able to get both and would lose a good deal of DPS, while frost mages would have the benefit of both debuffs. Now frost spec isn't forced to go 18 points into the fire tree, while arcane and fire can both get the same benefit from Scorch without losing out on Winter's Chill.
Waruko Aug 30th 2008 4:14PM
Improved Water Elemental used to be 3% at max rank now it's 0.6%?! Ouch. I was looking forward to that talent more then anything else. I'm still happy I get the talent but damn.
Ahoni Aug 30th 2008 3:59PM
0.6% of 10,000 mana is 60.
60 mana every 5 seconds for 1 minute is 720 mana.
0.6% of 15,000 mana is 90.
90 mana every 5 seconds for 1 minute is 1080 mana.
How underwhelming is that?
schwonga Aug 30th 2008 4:45PM
The term your looking for is "very". I think to bring it even more inline with the other regen over time skills it should work on a much shorter tick, like per second or at least every two.
Granted, mages aren't supposed to be mana batteries, but still it would be nice for it to be some what useful.
Aigarius Aug 30th 2008 4:15PM
I assume that mana return scales with the number of mana-returners in the raid in one way or another.
Hot Streak change is a bad nerf - with the previous version, if there were 3 or more targets in range you could spam Arcane Explosion and after the Hot Streak triggerred, you would have 100% crit all the time (until your mana ran out). Not that would be "king of AoE damage". The new version? Forgettable.
Sand Aug 30th 2008 5:00PM
Actually, it's a pretty significant buff. The old version may have been useful in aoe, but it sucked for single target damage. That 100% crit from arcane explosion was almost certainly unintended, anyway. The new version provides a significant dps increase against single targets that scales with your crit chance.
Roxton Aug 30th 2008 4:22PM
Well, arcane PvE is still a mess, our glyphs are almost all shockingly bad, and at the moment theorycrafting is showing that frost is the best tree for EVERYTHING.
It does the best DPS, DPM, DPT, has all the control you could want and also has survivability up the arse. Oh, and it's a mana battery, albeit not such a good one any more. So why spec into the other trees?
Well, if you want AoE, I suppose you could go fire, as though there was the slightest chance that you could survive doing any kind of AoE damage. It's sad that Blizzard have had to completely demolish a near perfect talent tree to compensate for one warlock spell - I speak of course of Seed of Corruption. Even if AoE is going to play a larger part in Wrath instances and Seed of Corruption is nerfed down to a level approaching balance, having to sacrifice any kind of mana efficiency or single target damage for the sake of AoE flies in the face of the mage class.
I quote from the original manual: "Only a rogue can begin to approach a mage's raw damage, and even then they have to get into melee range to unload it".*
I quote from Koraa on the Wrath forums: "A warlock should never be able to out-DPS a mage without a pet".
Wow, that's interesting. I'd never have guessed that from playing the game.
So, points of complaint (call this QQ if you will, but go and roll a mage and tell me I'm wrong):
1) Frost is too good. Far too good. At the moment there is no reason to spec anything other than frost heavy elemental.
2) Arcane is gimmicky. It's got lots of shiny things such as instant invisibility and 2 minute 60% crit chance PoM, which I'm sure will be great fun to play - I'm going arcane for the expansion just because it looks like fun - but trying to do damage with it in a PvE or even a PvP scenario seems stupid. Arcane Blast is currently costing over 1k mana on a normal cast, and the debuff is now only lasting 3 seconds, changing a very interesting spell into the most efficient mana burn in the game, for fairly negligible DPS. If Arcane Blast is changed back, then I think that we can see a bright future for arcane emerging, but at the moment it's stuffed.
However, my real cause for concern (I'm fairly confident that the points above will be addressed before Wrath launch) is a recent post by Kalgan the deceiver on the Wrath forums - vis; that mages are doing "twice as much damage as intended". Now, he goes on to say that they intend to buff other classes to compensate, not nerf mages, but I'm still scared, for three reasons:
1) Given his track record with mages, I refuse to believe anything good he says about us point blank
2) In the beta we are nowhere near doubling the DPS of any other class, so a 50% nerf would set us back worse than we are at the moment.
3) The beta is coming to an end.
*Now, some people say that this is all wrong, as a rogue should do more single target DPS, because a mage can do AoE zomg (and die or go OOM within ten seconds of starting AoE, but never mind), and also because a mage has "utility", which I presume means food that people should have anyway, a taxi for those too lazy to walk or HS, and a buff which is increasingly negligible in high-end raiding. Also, apparently our CC is better. However, with the changes affecting sap in the expansion, this last point can be ignored; apart from in specific circumstances, they are roughly equal in utility (if anything sap is more so, as all the instances in Wrath seen so far have been full of dragonkin and undead). In any case, they both fade into insignificance when compared to the new Repentance, which has a 1-minute duration now, affects EVERYTHING and can be cast in combat. GG giving pallys best CC in the game. Logic. Anyway, back to rogues.
Now, with focus magic and other minor damage increases mages are getting in Wrath, I agree that mages have marginally more utility than rogues. However, I do not believe that rogue damage should definitely be higher than mage damage as a result of this. Instead, give rogues some utility - why not a poison that increases damage done to the target by a certain amount? Rogues and mages should do equal single target damage, with the winner depending on the encounter; the same way in which a rogue has a DPS advantage on Aran at the moment while ranged classes tend to do better on other bosses.
Minidrake Aug 31st 2008 11:45PM
Not playing a mage seriously, I can't really respond to most of this.
I can say, Sap is nice and sexy and wonderful... right up until combat begins. QQ MOAR about Sap when your sheep only functions when both you AND your target are out of combat.
Minidrake Aug 31st 2008 11:48PM
Now LRN2ENGLISH MINIDRAKE.
What i mean to say is that your Sheep is great, constantly. I'm pretty sure you've got the whole diminishing returns issue, but you can Sheep pretty much any time you want. Rogues can only sap out of combat and only out of combat targets. Once we're IN combat, we get Blind with a 3min CD.
You've probably got some legitimate complaints in there but your CC ability vs. a Rogue's is simply not one of them.
kabshiel Aug 30th 2008 6:25PM
Just a note: warriors also have two mortal strike debuffs, so it's not completely weird that mages have two spell crit buffs. It's not necessarily good, but it's not weird.
Immacolata Aug 30th 2008 6:10PM
I always wanted them to change slow to be something good, now they change it and its just 10% more slow?? Extreme disappointment!
Focus Magic still has charges and still costs a lot of mana.
Water Elemental was a total nerf now It regens less than replenishment over a longer period of time. Personally I would rather have the thing do more damage with this talent or something rather than mana regen or make the guy immune to AoE especially if this is the way they're going with mana regen effects.
Hot Streak is alright but I was really looking forward to playing with the old hot streak because it seemed like it could completely change how fire mages played. At least with this change I can start using Pyroblast because right now I dont even have it on my bar.
I'm not sure how I feel about Fingers of Frost. It being charges is nice because as before it might be hard to fit two Frostbolts into the five second window if you need to run around during a fight. The way it is now really limits what you can use with those two charges though. They should really just increase the proc chance to 20-30% and limit it to one spell, IMO.
The scorch change Is really good IF they raise our DPS by a huge amount to make up for it. I always thought it was a bit OP when a talent could turn 600DPS to 800DPS single handedly. Now that it and Winters Chill buff all spell schools Its a great change.
Overall the changes are disappointing. It really makes me question the way they're going with Mages when more change make me sad than happy while other classes are getting liquid cool in a bottle. Still we have only one new spell announced and to me just combining fireball and frostbolt seems a like a cop-out.
Ahoni Aug 30th 2008 6:29PM
You seem to be having trouble with the WERTY keys, cuz that was all QQ.
Everyone thinks their glyphs suck.
If a warlock spams Seed of Corruption, he goes OOM too. Sure, they have life tap, but Seed will burn all their mana in about 10-15 seconds.
Koraa's comment that "A warlock should never be able to out-DPS a mage without a pet" is on the Wrath forums. Your own words: the Wrath forums. He is explaining why they nerfed Demonic Sacrifice. He is explaining why they have nerfed Improved Shadow Bolt. Its the expansion he is talking about, not the live game.
The theorycrafting I have seen on Elitist Jerks shows Arcane mages having BY FAR the best DPS of the three trees, with Frost trailing both Fire and Arcane by a significant margin. If you can point me to some other numbers, I'd love to see them.
Even if the bets is "coming to an end" as you state, there are still two months of PTR testing to get through.
Repentance has a 1 min cooldown. It is not spammable like sheep is.
But you don't want to hear any of this do ya? And yes, I do have a mage, and I am looking forward to playing as Frost in the expansion.
Ahoni Aug 30th 2008 6:33PM
Sorry, that was all supposed to be a reply to "Roxton"
Roxton Aug 30th 2008 7:50PM
http://www.magegraf.com/expansion/index.php?hash=30fd8b8565c8a80f07cee907499dcda7
Is where I got my theorycrafting from - oddly enough that's also a link from the elitistjerk forums. I'm a bit confused now. Also, about an hour after I posted the comment which I assume this is a reply to, arcane blast got its mana cost fixed, which does indeed increase the dps and dpm potential of the arcane tree, especially with the change to PoM so that it wears off after casting three instant/channeled damage spells. So about arcane I'm now very happy. I said I was confident that these things would change before release.
As for warlocks and SoC, you said it yourself: lifetap. This little ability, which caused so much QQ when people even thought of changing it, makes SoC incredibly useful, as warlocks can leech their mana from the healers. Why do you think that people choose warlocks over mages for Illhoof? It's not just because they have bigger health pools. And re. Koraa's point on the Wrath forums, yes, that's right, it was part of an explanation about Wrath changes. I was using it as evidence along with the rogue quote to show that from Blizzard's perspective mages should be top DPS, from official announcements.
Your next point - when I heard about repentance originally, I heard that it had had its CD reduced to 30 secs. With a minute it's still strong, provided the huntard doesn't scatter-shot it. I'm talking about it in a raid environment btw, where short of nubness or incredible bad luck you shouldn't need to have to spam CC; repentance it once and then leave it for a minute, when you either repentance it again or deal with it.
Finally, please stop putting words in my mouth. I was expressing dissatisfaction with the current state of the beta; not only that, but I stated quite clearly that I expected things to improve. If there is good news, as there was today, I do of course want to know. Much as it would appear to shock you, many mages would actually prefer to have a good class to play than a bad one to whine about. Oh, and some of us also don't want to have to spec frost, which is what I was talking about at the start of my comment.
And about the glyphs: yes, everyone does seem to look down on their glyphs, with a few exceptions. The only ones that stand out to me (apart from penguin ofc) is the blink one, because that and a step is out of intercept/heroic leap range, and the water elemental one for frost mages, for obvious reasons. Looking back on my post, I phrased that a little strongly, but at the time I was still in shock at rogues getting water walking, which is something I'd always hoped frost mages would get.
As for the months of PTR testing, I hope you're right, I really do. I don't know if you were around for the original "jaw-dropping damage" thing, but Kalgan's post does leave me with a feeling of unpleasant familiarity. He even talks about their wonderful "damage testers" again, for crying out loud. Hopefully someone at Blizz who didn't just loose a duel to a mage will sort things out; I'm just wary such announcements. After all, there was PTR testing last time.
Wolftech Aug 30th 2008 8:36PM
I have yet to understand why when in a post about mages, when mages complain about obvious issues facing our class, non mages come and claim we are QQing.
If you don't play a mage, you have no justifiable right to comment on our class. Stay our of our discussions with idiotic comments like "You seem to be having trouble with the WERTY keys, cuz that was all QQ."
Go back to your own forums, Troll.
Ahoni Aug 30th 2008 9:22PM
Sorry, I should have left the insult out ...
Sinthar Sep 1st 2008 10:03AM
Ahoni : As far as im concerned your forgiven for your insult. Mage QQ has a renown (or is it infamy) that is not deserved imo, much like hunters being labled 'huntards'. Whilst there ARE plenty of them (both bad hunters and mage QQ'ers), please try not to judge on unfounded reputation, nor insult people without good cause, lest you do become a forum troll (also that is the definition of bigotry i think (judging by unfounded preconcieved opinions)- my english is not good so please excuse if thats not quite correct).
Personally i have now chilled with beta to the point where they can say its been cancelled and i wont turn a hair. Ill get worked up when i can do something about it, and its been 'rejigged' to the point where its meant to be working. Its too much blood pressure to worry about everything before then. Comment - yes, moan - possibly, blow up about it - nah - no chance.
As to the article, its changes - wot do you expect from a BETA TEST. Nice to see they are still looking at things - and trying to balance them. Shame they seem hopelessly inept at doing so in most cases (and for most classes).