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by Zach Yonzon 
Sep 10th 2008 at 12:30AM
Well, maybe not magnificent, but at least functional and viable in Wrath of the Lich King. Tipster Daniel alerted us to Ghostcrawler -- the blue of blues for Wrath, according to him -- blinking into the Mage forums to request Mages to give feedback about the different trees. Although Ghostcrawler seems to post her call outs during the wee hours when people are deep in slumber -- or in a drawn-out raid -- we at WoW Insider believe that it's our duty to get everyone in on the action. If you happen to be in Beta and play a Mage, now is the chance to have your thoughts heard on the Frost tree, the Fire tree, and the Arcane tree. While you're at it, give the developers a pat on the back for the overwhelmingly enjoyable Mirror Image.
Filed under: Mage, Blizzard, Wrath of the Lich King, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
TotalBiscuit Sep 10th 2008 7:48AM
Can you tell me how to wine? Doesn't it involve stomping grapes and some kind of fermentation process?
TotalBiscuit Sep 10th 2008 7:55AM
Fact is that right now, the Frostfire crit build in it's various variations is the only way to go when it comes to raiding. You can pack an exceptionally mana-efficient punch with a high crit potential and massive crit damage. There are various ways to build it, personally I've taken 0/51/20, a deep fire variant, with the glyph of improved scorch to speed up stacking (sadly broken in beta atm). Combine that with hotstreak and you're spitting out instant pyroblasts on a very regular basis. You'll get to see how effective that is in our forthcoming CoT : Stratholme video.
Due to the clear lack of understanding of the mage role on the part of the designers though, if you take any of those builds, you're still going to suffer from an inordinate number of junk talents. I suppose that's indicative of any attempt to build elementalist, but you'd think they'd have learned in 3 years how to create talent trees that don't force you to take useless talents.
My concern is that they're going to nerf that build badly and if they do, we're going to end up in a real mess. None of the other trees are competitive when it comes to DPS. Arcane is a complete mess, particularly due to the changes to arcane blast, with any spell pushback causing your stacking damage buff to reset, and making it impossible to integrate into any rotation. Deep fire is nice but criminally mana inefficient, with Living Bomb standing out as a complete joke of a talent. It also suffers from having too many PvP-friendly talents deeper in the tree. Frost seems ok, I haven't had the opportunity to test it out properly.
I worry for the future of my class if they kill the frostfire build. The trees still need some work and we still lack raid utility outside of being a walking vending machine. Mana pies anyone?
Roxton Sep 10th 2008 8:18AM
TB,
I appreciate the concerns you have about the arcane tree, as I share them, but aside from the arcane blast debuff problems, what's the mana like for arcane? Presumably with mages having lots of spirit on gear, and with the glyph of mage armour, Arcane meditation and student of the mind, I can see arcane being very good mana-wise. But is it still inferior to frostfirebolt in DPM (factoring in regen?)
TotalBiscuit Sep 10th 2008 9:13AM
Honestly yeah, it's going to be inferior to Frostfire. Frostfire is critting upwards of 8k in arena blues, and it's critting an awful lot. Frostfire bolt casts slightly slower than arcane blast, but it's a more mana-efficient spell if you take the correct build (frostfire benefits from ALL mana-reducing frost and fire talents as far as I know).
Nikto Sep 10th 2008 2:08PM
I don't know about you, but whe using Mirror Image in instances, it has been HORRIBLE bugged for me (and any other mages). ALthough teh mirrors attack and do damage, my toon is constantly being turned to the rear (interrupting whatever was cast). I am lucky to get a single non-instant cast off before they images despawn (after which the bug stops).
disarrayed Sep 10th 2008 3:34PM
"I worry for the future of my class if they kill the frostfire build. The trees still need some work and we still lack raid utility outside of being a walking vending machine. Mana pies anyone?"
Now that just gave me a really great laugh.
Baa~
Alex Sep 10th 2008 6:50PM
I was hoping this talent would be implemented... but in a different way.
Perhaps its my PvP experience talking right now, but I really don't like the idea of this spell. It seems that this is an I-win button on a 5-minute cooldown. It basically quadruples your damage and, being a bust damage class, will likely bring down your average player-opponent in a couple seconds. Being on the receiving end of that = not fun. Heck you don't even need to put points into any talent tree for this.
I was hoping for something not exactly I-win but fun and effective none the less. Perhaps this could be modified so that the "receiver" wouldn't know which mage was the one blowing him up. An interesting tooltip for this spell would be:
Summons 3 mirror images bearing the caster's clothes, armor and name. At the time of summoning the mage may randomly switch places with one of the images. These images mimic the caster's movement, actions and spells. These images cannot cause damage or be the target of AoE or multitarget attacks.
Ness Sep 24th 2008 8:28PM
Yes... in pvp that is a good point... but then it is absolutaly worthless in PvE
Paulkid Sep 11th 2008 3:49AM
probably a biit of topic but i'd love to have a way to acumulate arcane dust as death knights accumulate cropse dust (from dead humanoids fro raising ghouls).. say whenever casting arcane blast at 3 charges there is a small chance to recieve arcane dust... it's just so annoying when you need to go back to a vendor because you cant cast arcane brilliance - though i guess arcane intellect does work OKAY if you HAVE to haha.. hard though with many people
Paulkid Sep 11th 2008 4:53AM
One little thing i'd also love to have updated is with deep freeze, how tehy're stunned for 5 seconds, well what if instead of a steon.. you are putting them into a 'deep freeze' if you get my drift?
Deep freeze encases the target in a block of ice - *similar to a druids cyclone spell where they're invulnerable but unable to act' but looks alot cooler and fits in alot better :)
otherwise it would be great to see them 'stunned' frozen in their previous position and a shade of blue.. with little frosty effects haha.. i want them to be veeery cold, so cold they are stunned :) haha