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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsClass Q&A: Mage
by Eliah Hecht 
Jun 19th 2009 at 7:00AM
Second up in the class Q&A (Shamans were first) are Mages, those lovable glass cannons. Or are they? The Q&A opens with Ghostcrawler discussing public perception of the class, with a prompt of "a lot has changed since the days when the 'glass cannon' description was applied."
General
GC describes the mage as "the iconic caster:" deals magic damage from range. They should be versatile enough to do single-target damage, AoE damage, and crowd control, and every group should want one. (I'm noticing a trend here -- GC also described Shamans as a class every group should want. I guess every group should want all classes.)
They like the different feel between the three trees is in a good place, with Frostfire possibly providing a fourth aesthetic. They have decided that "king of AoE" is no longer a good niche to put any class in, so now they're trying to give both AoE and single-target to all DPS specs (with "extra effort" to make sure mages do good AoE).
Why has Mage seen fewer changes than other classes during Wrath? "By and large, the class works." Not that it's perfect, but it's in pretty good shape.
This is something that's never occurred to me before. GC says one thing that makes Mages unique is that each spec is centered on one spell (like Fireball). Procs and cooldowns keep this from getting boring.
Mages are still a glass cannon (compared to the other cloth classes), and they're meant to be - escape abilities should be your main way to keep alive.
Itemization
People are concerned that itemization supports Fire over Frost. GC responds that the design isn't to have Frost use vastly different items than Fire; they feel that some work is required here. They're making "a big pass" on talents and stats to try to help this for all classes.
Will mages get robes or the option of robes over tunics going forward? Answer: "this is not a huge priority for us at this time" (translation: we don't care).
Mana efficiency
Broadly speaking, the philosophy is that healers might run OOM if they're undergeared or misplayed, but DPS players should not run OOM. To support this, they are "likely" to lower the mana costs of the major mage nukes.
Is mage AoE too expensive? Well, they don't want casting Blizzard on one or two mobs to be attractive; efficiency is still good on many mobs. Some other mage spells could use boosts to make them as efficient as Blizzard.
This doesn't really fit into mana efficiency, but: they're considering making Spell Steal only steal spells that are beneficial to the mage.
Talent trees
Arcane is "a little bloated." The Warrior Prot tree and the Paladin Ret tree are good examples of talent trees they like - fewer required talents, more points to spend on "fun play-style choices."
They are not concerned that Torment the Weak is considered a mandatory talent for all mages; they don't think it's needed for Frostfire, and they don't think it's a problem for Frost or Fire to sub-spec into Arcane. Oh, mandatory Arcane points, will you never leave us?
There are plans to improve Fire in PvP, though the think it's "more important" to fix classes that have "no viable specs" for Arena. They do want to improve Dragon's Breath for PvP.
Fire's threat does concern the devs; they want to fix it through Invisibility (which they are changing to be uninterruptable in patch 3.2).
As ever, they want to make Frost PvE viable, but without over-buffing it in PvP. Ice Lance is a target for a buff, though they're not sure how to do that yet.
The Q&A wraps up with a question about Blink, and its many failings. GC recognizes that one of the places it seems to fail the most is in the WSG tunnels; they're working on it. They say if you have a Blink bug, the most helpful thing is to report it on the Bug Report forum with specifically where it was that the failure occurred, so they can hopefully fix the maps.
That's the end of the mage Q&A. Not a whole ton of substance here, but this fits with GC's assertion that Mages are mostly alright. Next up? Mages' arch-rivals, Warlocks.
Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!Filed under: Mage
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
nieboh Jun 19th 2009 1:06PM
This was my thought on reading it as well. What do they mean by beneficial. Even if the mage can't use it, stealing a buff is a benefit for the mage because the other guy doesn't have it. I didn't realize it wasn't supposed to be a general dispell. I thought it was supposed to be a "dispell plus".
On the other hand, a glyph for spell steal would be cool...if it was a minor glyph. Currently I only have 2 minor glyphs just because the minor glyphs for mages are all kinda weak (except slow fall which I consider mandatory).
I am loving the change to Invisibility though. Maybe they could do the same sort of deal with Evocation.
a.pozzati Jun 19th 2009 8:03AM
Mage is in pretty good shape ?
Well we are better than TBC, but still have sub-par dps (locks and hunters do more dps)
Fire has overaggro problems, ffb is too RNG and arcane is scaling bad w equip
oh and we need a reworked evocation
I agreed that melee dps is more risky than ranged and so they deserve a little more dps, but locks and hunters have more survavibility than mages, why are they garanted more dps ?
may be because they do more QQ ?
Magma Jun 19th 2009 8:17AM
Locks having more survivability? That's a joke.
SarahTheGnome Jun 19th 2009 8:27AM
No Magma, it is actually not a joke, everyone knows that locks have more survivability than mages, especially if we look at the most common PvE specs out there. Even GC states in the Q&A, that mages are still the most vulnerable class out there;
"Mages still are a glass cannon when compared to priests and warlocks."
But I do not feel our dps is too low at the moment, so I do not agree with Pozatti either, but your statement is incorrect Magma.
Laelestia Jun 19th 2009 9:28AM
I have to disagree. I've seen mages consistently near the top of the meters, speaking both of myself and others in raids with many people consistently doing upwards of 4 - 5k dps. Ghostcrawler is actually correct to say that the mage is in a good place right now, as aside from frosts dps being rather lackluster there's no big issues causing the class grief. There's a lot of small tweaks I'd love to see them make, such as changing the first tier of the arcane tree so that it has something to offer frostbolt and fireball specs, and making combustion not suck. Beyond that it's all gravy.
Todd Jun 19th 2009 8:20AM
I often feel the mage class is doomed with the way the developers treat the class.
Todd Jun 19th 2009 9:37AM
If only the devs would remove some of the more uselss, albeit situational spells, like Amplify Magic or Dampen Magic. I like the buff being given to invisibility.
Why require the use of invisibility for the Fire tree to cope with threat... why not, dare I ask, add in a talent that greatly reduces said threat? Frost has great mitigation, not just because of the lower damage output, but of the threat reducing talents.
Torment of the Weak should be lowered in the tree to help apply better to the other builds. There are a lot of points wasted in the arcane tree.
SarahTheGnome Jun 19th 2009 8:28AM
The Q&A was a bit tame, but so was the shaman one, so I did not expect that much from it. I do feel a bit disappointed that no answer was given to the many many evocation questions out there, since it is a problem on some Ulduar encounters.
pietrex Jun 19th 2009 8:31AM
"Will mages get robes or the option of robes over tunics going forward? Answer: "this is not a huge priority for us at this time" (translation: we don't care)."
Sad face. :( I hate my ugly legs!
WoWie Zowie Jun 19th 2009 8:49AM
admittedly i didn't read the real post, only this summy on wow.com, but i'm kinda bummed evocation didn't come up =\
Cautivo Jun 19th 2009 8:59AM
It did, but GC basically said "You don't really need evocation in most encounters". He has obviously played Arcane a lot then, eh?
Ect Jun 19th 2009 9:30AM
"Invisibility (which they are changing to be uninterruptable in patch 3.2)."
Wha-wha-what? I had not heard that. That will be nice for Mages without Prismatic Cloak, especially in PVP.
Kylenne Jun 19th 2009 9:31AM
Normally I don't get on the GC hate train, but this Q&A is exactly why my favorite class got relegated to alt status when I rerolled. I love how he blatantly contradicted himself regarding Frost PvE. "screw you guys, you have 3 raiding specs already, Frost is for PvP!" then goes on to talk about buffing Fire in PvP, then goes back to the old canard about trying to make Frost a raid spec again.
Dude's starting to sound like an ogre, with the two heads arguing with each other. I don't even think he knows what he wants at this point.
Frank Jun 19th 2009 9:35AM
i am thrilled that they are going to figure out ways for fire casters to reduce threat. the unbroken invisibility casting coming up in the next patch is really going to help me.
Teralis Jun 20th 2009 3:02PM
Eh, in regards to the amount of positive and more thought out decisions to ALL the other classes... I feel like we're getting the big stiffie.
I don't know how I feel about what GC says until we actually see some patch notes or some inclination what they actually intend on changing.
Whitetauren Jun 19th 2009 10:55AM
troll mages look good in t8
TobiasX Jun 19th 2009 10:59AM
@Odiee: You really needed to be sarcastic and insulting?
The code I suggested is the simplest way they could've fixed the "slopes" issue and, like you said, anyone could've thought of that. There is nothing wrong with blinking off a platform and appearing in mid air. If you blink off a cliff that's a player problem, not a game problem.
Blink moves the character forward 20 'yards'. It's nothing to check whether or not, within that space, there is an impassable object. If there is then make the spell not cast. It is that simple. This is why the mage community is so confused about why Blink hasn't been fixed yet.
I don't believe for a second that there are few enough places that Blink fails that it's better to fix that rather than the spell. Not for a second.
TobiasX Jun 19th 2009 11:06AM
Damn reply system.
It's more likely that they've only just started looking at blink and have just had higher priorities. Glad they've finally got to it, but the solution has always been so damn simple...
... and yes, I studied programming at university and work alongside programmers in my current job. I know at least some of what I'm talking about here.
Bobson Jun 19th 2009 11:27AM
Should mages be able to blink through walls? don't check the space inbetween for impassability. Should they be able to jump pits and gaps with it? Don't check that the ground is continuous. Should they be able to climb high cliffs? Just move them up if something is in the way.
If you do all three checks, you get behavior where something will seem to be in the way that isn't really. If you don't, you let mages go places that others can't.
TobiasX Jun 19th 2009 11:32AM
Blink through walls: No.
Blink over impassable space: Yes.
Blink up cliffs: Within reason. I'd be surprised if certain objects aren't tagged as "slopes". If the object is not a slope, and is higher than the height of the character, Blink would fizzle.