Arcane Brilliance: Q to the power of Q
by Christian Belt 
Mar 14th 2009 at 5:00PM
Each week Arcane Brilliance runs out of mana halfway through a column about Mages. Seriously, Arcane Brilliance is terrible at managing its mana. And then every time it Evocates, Arcane Brilliance manages to get interrupted before it gets any mana back. It really sucks. Yep, Arcane Brilliance spends a lot of time wanding. To be honest, Arcane Brilliance is probably about one more wipe away from getting kicked out of its guild. LTP, Arcane Brilliance...LTP.
I tried my best to be optimistic last week, to look at the changes to Fiery Payback and Impact (especially Impact) as semi-good things. The Fiery Payback-disarm effect will be marginally positive, I told myself, and at the very least, Impact being triggered by Fire Blast will make the spell less random and more controllable, right? We Mages get such a reputation for being whiners that I try to steer clear of pessimism as much as a can just to avoid being lumped in with that lame generalization. I try, and most of the time I fail, but I award myself an "A" for effort.
The comments section set me straight last week. Fire Mages are not happy with Blizzard's attempt at improving their survivability in PvP. You guys were brutally frank in your comments, and I have to admit that I see your point. Nobody likes dying, but as a Fire Mage you sort of expect it, similar to the way nobody likes getting tackled, but as a football player you know it comes with the territory. All Fire Mages want is to be able to dish out an acceptable amount of pain before they explode. In fact, a lot of you proposed the idea of allowing Fire Mages to literally explode upon death, making killing one a dangerous proposition. Several of you commented that this was a Fire Mage's idea of survivability, to die, but leave a smoking crater behind. Seriously, this is an idea I can get behind.
Here's the thing, though: If you weren't happy with the changes last week, you really aren't going to like the latest PTR build. Follow me through the break and we'll talk ourselves through the changes. I'll try to keep the tears to a minimum.
Mirror Image
Mirror Image has always been a buggy mess, but it was a buggy mess that I loved. It began life as a massive aggro drop, an offensive burst, a fantastic defensive spell, a random CC, and a huge helping of confusing, butt-kickety nonsense. Since then, it has seen nothing but nerfs. The DPS put out by your mirror images was nerfed to the point of rendering it negligible. The threat generated by summoning your copies was reduced drastically. The spell lost a lot of its luster, and became something of a novelty, really only living up to its potential in PvP and nowhere else.
Since the PTR started up, Mirror Image has seen still more changes. A glyph was added for it, giving it a bit more utility. It gave the Frostbolts cast by your mirror images the ability to apply the Winter's Chill effect, a 1% spell crit debuff on the target that could stack up to five times. The latest build of the PTR has actually upped this utility from 1% to 2%, meaning that when fully stacked, the effect increases the chance spells cast on the target will critically strike by 10%. That's a fair amount of utility to add to a spell that currently has a marginal amount of it in PvE, even if it will use up a major glyph slot to get it. I'm not saying the glyph is worth that slot, but it certainly gives us another option, especially in light of the upcoming nerfs to our other talents that apply a crit chance debuff. More on that later.
Blizzard giveth, and as we all know, Blizzard taketh away. I'd say the taketh lately has been a lot more prevalent than the giveth, but I'm a Mage, and everybody knows our two favorite letters are Q and Q. In fact, I can hardly stop crying long enough to kill Warlocks these days. On the bright side: I get thristy a lot, and my tears are, indeed, delicious.
The latest nerf to Mirror Image comes in PTR build 9684. Your mirror images will now no longer cast Polymorph. Admittedly, this ability was already far too random to count on, but it was a pretty cool bit of utility, especially in PvP. And now it's gone. Your copies will now be strictly DPS, casting only Fire Blast and Frostbolt.
My feeling here--and this is just my personal impression--is that Blizzard is sort of undecided when it comes to this spell. What do they want it to be used for? Is it a PvP spell or a PvE spell? Is it both? Is it meant to increase DPS, or provide utility, or be used for defensive purposes, or a mixture of all three? The CC component has now been completely removed, and the DPS is negligible. The glyph is interesting, but I get the feeling that most Mages won't want to sacrifice a more straightforward glyph for it, especially when you consider the fact that your copies die almost instantly in a great many boss fights.
I guess I'm just worried about this spell. I still love it, but I don't like what's happening to it. It could be so good, and I hate to see it go to waste. Let's hope that Blizzard hasn't tapped out their ideas for Mirror Image. I await future PTR builds with my fingers crossed.
Improved Scorch/Winter's Chill
And the nerf train keeps rolling. These buffs have been reduced by half, down from 2% extra crit chance per application to 1%, bringing them in line with similar debuffs applied by other classes. In case you hadn't noticed, Warlocks are getting their own version of this debuff, with a stacking crit chance effect being applied by Improved Shadow Bolt. This is yet another stop on the "bring the player not the class" express Blizzard seems to be so fond of these days. I figure we're only a patch or two away from Priests being able to equip plate and Death Knights being able to conjure food and water.
To be honest, I don't hate this change, and here's why: I always hated keeping that stupid Improved Scorch debuff up anyway. It was a pain, it took up a glyph slot if I wanted to maximize its effectiveness, and having to throw Scorch into my rotation hurt my DPS. Yes, I know I'm an Arcane Mage and don't actually have Improved Scorch at all. I was trying to walk a mile in your shoes, guys. I feel your pain. Seriously, though, if the Warlock can apply this debuff for us, I say we make him do it. We can put those talent points somewhere else, thank you very much.
One last note
I don't know if you saw this recent Ghostcrawler thread on the official forums in which he commented on the fact that Blizzard still plans to make spirit a useful stat for Mages, but if you didn't, you owe it to yourself to read through it. Go ahead...I'll wait.
Okay, do any of you have any idea what he's getting at here? Here's what I get from his posts:
- Spirit becoming "more useful" is still in the plan.
- This does not mean that it will give us spellpower, like it does with Boomkin, Shadow Priests, and Warlocks.
- Blizzard wants Mages who avoid spirit and Mages who don't to be about equal in regards to DPS.
- Spirit can't provide more DPS and more regen, or else it becomes "godly." Yes, indeed.
Maybe you guys can explain it to me. We were told that spirit would become a "more useful and interesting stat for all Mages." If it isn't going to increase our damage, and isn't going to increase our mana regen (beyond its already meager ability to do so), what is it going to do?
PTR build 9785
Mages
- Spirit will now make your whites whiter, and eliminate static cling.
- Spirit will also serve as a juicer, and make delicious french fries.
- You can now exchange your spirit points for Arena points.
- For a nominal fee, spirit will now babysit your kids while you go out to dinner.
- Um....chicks dig spirit? Or something?
Every week Arcane Brilliance teleports you inside the wonderful world of Mages and then hurls a Fireball in your face. Check out our recent guide to gearing your Mage for Naxxramas, or our look at which stats are most important to Mages and why. Until next week, keep the Mage-train a-rollin'.Filed under: (Mage) Arcane Brilliance, Mage, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Features, Classes, Talents
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Ensane Mar 14th 2009 5:09PM
It would be cool is they made the three images each do something different. Make one focus on a tree each, so you got an arcane, fire, and frost image. If they changed their mind, they could have the arcane image be more of a cc image and cast polymorph (maybe even slow too, if so they could make it so that your frost image will benefit from frost talents ext.)
Alkatraz Mar 14th 2009 5:16PM
Oh ya you mean like the nexus boss?
Maxilimus Mar 14th 2009 5:59PM
Well the nexus boss IS a mage, so...
Kassu Mar 14th 2009 6:43PM
Didn't poly like, you know, heal anyone affected by it?
I don't know about you, but there is something about HEALING someone I want to kill that seems a little perlexing...
Ensane Mar 14th 2009 6:51PM
yeah, like the nexus boss. It would make the spell make a bit more sense and make it a little more interesting.
MazokuRanma Mar 14th 2009 9:58PM
Ok, in this case, I would support this as a purely cosmetic change. It would sure look cooler if one cast frostbolt, one cast fireball, and the other cast arcane barrage (I think this spell looks cooler, but I expect they'd go with arcane missiles if they actually implemented it). At least I'd enjoy watching my useless spell... =D
Jesse Mar 15th 2009 9:29AM
there are other useful stats for spirit to scale that would not necessarily increase damage, but rather provide wiggle room with other gear choices. Hit Rating, I'm looking at you...
Wasuremono Mar 14th 2009 5:13PM
@ Ensane that would be cool and would also make more sense to me than an arcane mage's mirror images casting frostbolt.
GC's comments are once again completely contradictory and when taken together cancel each other out adding up to a big fat zero.
Does GC himself have a split personality? It seems that his comments lately really reveal a lack of any overarching vision or plan for the game.
Kakistocracy Mar 14th 2009 5:35PM
Maybe his mirror images answered the questions.
Boot Mar 14th 2009 5:17PM
Sooo...is the Improved Shadow bolt crit buff going to stack with Winter's Chill or Improved Scorch? I figured since they are going from 10% to 5%...maybe they were thinking that 5% would come from Warlocks and 5% from mages. Dunno, been curious about this and I don't go on the PTRs.
Christian Belt Mar 14th 2009 5:20PM
Nope. No stacking. Everybody gets the same buff, basically, which means if somebody else in the raid is throwing out a crit buff, yours is rendered moot. All of these buffs overwrite each other.
Kakistocracy Mar 14th 2009 5:40PM
As it stands, if a mage is keeping winter's chill on the boss, I can't put on scorch, but what if the chill mage is a slacker and his buff keeps dropping off some how, does the glyphed improved scorch let me jump a head of one or two stacks of an equivalent buff? It seems like it doesn't, but I can't say definitively.
And yes, passively applied buffs are a better way to keep the buff up, but as I said, slackers...
MazokuRanma Mar 14th 2009 9:49PM
It seems highly unlikely that this would happen unless the mage died. I would think most mages with that talent would be full frost, and they're casting frostbolts way too often for the debuff to lapse unless dead.
The only thing I can think of would be if it was a heavy frost frostfire mage, which I've heard of but never actually seen. In that case though, I'm not certain if Frostfire Bolt counts as a frost spell for applying the debuff. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
As far as whether or not you could pick up the slack, I wouldn't think so. I think the debuff applied is actually titled 'Improved Scorch', while for frost it's titled 'Winter's Chill'. Since the debuffs are named separately, I don't think one could refresh the other. They'd have to be applying the same debuff for that to work. Also, the effect doesn't stack, but I believe both debuffs can be applied at the same time. If I'm correct in this, there's no way one could refresh the other. If anyone can check me on this, I'd appreciate it.
Kakistocracy Mar 14th 2009 11:38PM
First, yes, I don't know how people manage to fail to keep winter's chill up, but I often notice that the stack is lower than five in the middle of the fight, leading me to assume that they are in the process of restacking (and given that other people's debuffs show up as pretty small icons which I give little attention I suspect that the times I notice it is being reapplied may indicated times it hasn't been on at all).
Second, Yes, they are entirely different buffs, so no, they can't refresh each other. And no, I do not think that they can both be up, even if one is not actively functioning, I believe it gives the "a more powerful spell is already active" message if you try. So my question was, (if I don't trust the other mage) will the game see one stack of winter's chill (a 2% crit increase) as more powerful than three stacks of improved scorch (6% with glyph), and still not allow me to apply more debuff and disregard the other. My guess is that it would still lock mine out, because as we saw with trinkets that stack on spell casts, scorch, improved scorch, and each of its glyph based reiterations count as separate spell (making it 4 spells with each cast). So it would most likely check each individual stack against the one stack of winter's chill already up (so 1% against 1%) and consider the ≥ spell already up to have priority, preventing mine from applying and stacking. So I was just wondering if that was indeed the case.
Aigarius Mar 15th 2009 4:42AM
All debufs are applied to the boss, but only the most potent one in this category is actually active. We have a fire mage and a frost mage - the fire mage puts a scorch stack up at the start and then forgets about it whie the frost mage's stack goes up and eventually overtakes when the scorch expires.
Drakensteel Mar 14th 2009 5:18PM
Umm...maybe it will increase sruvivability somehow? Kinda doubt it though. My guess is that they will likely nerf mages, then make it so that if u are useing spirit u will get buffed back to where you are right now (ex. increase regain while casting, but increase spell cost. Or go ahead and give a spell power talent, but put a nerf on spells generally).
Granted it would take alot of balanceing, and completly screw someone who is avoiding spirit, but I highly doubt that would stop blizz if they wanted to do it.
Khalis Mar 14th 2009 5:19PM
Now that I can get a 'lock to handle the crit debuf, I can move those points elsewhere to get more DPS.
I don't mind the Mirror Image changes. I just wish they would at least try to do some damage to my target instead of wandering off to attack the farthest possible enemy.
Talia Mar 16th 2009 3:58PM
I hear you on the unintelligent targeting of the mirrors. One night in Naxx, on the pre-Thaddius mobs, I was on Feugen, cast MI, and they actually *turned around*, ran down the ramp, and across the room to start attacking Stalagg. At least check for proximity or something!!!
Galmr Mar 17th 2009 1:05PM
@Talia,
I can personally corroborate what you're saying about the mirrors. EVERY week in Naxx this happens when our mage uses his on the two mini-bosses before Thaddius. They have never once bothered to stay on the side he is standing on, never mind that they can't even be bothered to attack the same target as him. Needless to say, this can cause issues if the group isn't watching the now skewed DPS groups. I sure wish Blizz would at least make them commandable like pets like they did with the Druid's Trees in the last patch.
Zarintaj Mar 14th 2009 5:21PM
It is obvious that Blizzard doesn't really know what to do with Mages. They tend to have a lack of creativity with us, but whatever.
As far as Ghostcrawlers comments about not giving us spell power with spirit: That is just retarded. Sorry, but why is it that the other DPS casters can get it, but we can't?
It also looks like Mages are following the path that was laid out in The Burning Crusade. Decent in the first tier of raiding, then down hill the rest of the way.