Poster: Astos at 5/8/2006 12:31:30 PM PDT
Subject: Mage Review - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly |
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I care a lot about the review and have been posting about it for a long time. I have a lot of respect for Blizzard, and a decent dose of blind faith, because I know they care even more than we do about the health of their game. However, you wisely ask for feedback, so I am going to give it--and while I am generally positive about the review, I think in this case there are definitely some things that could use improvement, and if they are not changed the mage review will be incomplete.
I am going to do the "if you are in a hurry read the bold" thing, for easy of viewing.
First, qualifications: I am a Guild Leader on a PvE server of a guild that is currently working on C'Thun, and has every other non-optional boss on farm status. I also spend a significant amount of time PvPing (mainly in Battlegrounds), and maintain at least Officer rank at all times, with spurts up the rankings depending on the amount of time I have. I have been playing a mage without break since Closed Beta.
Second, an assumption: There isn't anything more coming that has been held back on mage changes. I posted a thread asking last week, and received no response--but if this assumption is wrong I would love to hear it stated clearly.
Now, feedback:
The Good:
- Arcane Explosion and Evocation as base abilities. This is *more* than I personally asked for in a previous thread suggesting mage changes (Reasonable Suggestions some months ago). I think we would have been fine with just Evocation as a base ability. But I am not complaining.
- Master of the Elements / Shatter - These allow elementalist combinations to be more viable, as promised. Thank you.
- Master of the Elements and AoE - How this works is frankly genius. Since there is no cap on the amount of mana returned by Master of the Elements, mages are once again the Kings and Queens of AoE damage. Frost Nova (with Shatter), then Flamestrike + Cone of Cold on a large group of mobs, and you will probably refill most of your mana bar. This is a great answer to Warlocks lifetap for constant AE damage. I am proud of Blizzard on this one.
- "Freeing up" of talent points. Can't complain about this, though I think less points were freed up than Blizzard believes, because often the abilities that had their point costs reduced were abilities few people took in the first place (Improved Scorch, Improved Fireblast).
- The -threat on crits from Arcane Subt. I like this mechanic--I really do. And Arcane Subt in general is an awsome talent. I do have some problems with it as a threat reducer (below), but in general I like the idea. As a high-end raider, I do on occasion live in fear of strings of crits (particularly when DPSing Twin Emps), and the neg resists aspect is underrated.
- The change in cooldown on Ice Barrier. 30 second cooldown on Ice Barrier is a perfect way to increase its usefullness, and has inspired me to spec full Frost again come the patch. Frost will now actually be a survival tree when spec'd to 31 points. (This assumes this is a real change, and not another IGN typo.)
The Bad
- Threat issues remain. First, let me say: So long as Blizzard doesn't focus on agro-control again, as they did in BWL, this is not a big issue. However, if ever there is another pure agro control fight, the division between Horde and Alliance mages will re-assert itself. (Twin Emps comes close, but I wouldn't raise it quite to that level.)
Now, this assumes you aren't giving Shamens the equivalent of Blessing of Salvation. (No, Tranquil Air totem doesn't count. I love you Alliance guys, I really do--I have a miniature Paladin of my own--but it's just not in the same ballpark. I think I have had a Tranq Air totem perhaps 5 times since it was put into the game, and that's raiding 5 days a week.) However, if you assume Shamen aren't getting a better -threat, then we still have issues. We can still pull agro easily if we do not greatly throttle our DPS. This is not the case with Hunters or Rogues--they have "oh crap" abilities if they pull agro. We don't. It is, as has been described before, "un-fun" to have to hold back on damage to such a great degree.
- The new Arcane Subt. doesn't fix these threat issues. Arcane Subt is great, but it is great for a specific sort of build--crit builds. This is nice for crit builds--they needed it. But, inevitably this means it is better for Fire specs than Frost specs.
Fire specs do more damage on crits, so will have more threat reduced per crit than frost. Furthermore, Fire has more crit talents than Frost. A Scorch build in Fire can have +10% crits from talents alone, while Frost has +0%, or +5% if the stackable debuff is up.
For people who don't spec for crit, and instead get extra damage from +damage, then threat issues remain.
Suggestions for threat fixes:
- Reduce Arcane Subt's -threat on crits, and give a small global -threat to Arcane Subt.
- Buff shamen with a raid wide -threat ability.
- Increase the value of enchants such as Subtelty on cloak.
- Thinking outside of the box: Add a way for mages to *see* where they are on the threat list. Somehow. I know my damage went up a lot with KTM Threat Meter, but that is not completely accurate. Part of the reason mages have to throttle their damage is that they have no feedback mechanism telling them how close they are to getting agro. If we had a message that said: "Your Spidy senses are tingling--you are about to pull agro!", then it would be easier to manage threat, and we might not need a reduction.
- Filler talents in Arcane. Yes, I know, not all talents can be useful. But, there is a difference between "not that useful" and "practically useless". If you take a talent that you know is going to do you no pratical good, it is not fun.
Filler talents that need changed:
1. Arcane Resliance. Look at my gear on my CT Profile--it's full Tier 2 armor and the best of most things outside of C'Thun drops. I didn't neglect intellect. But my Int? 342. The amount of armor I would get? 171. That's small.
However, let's assume it is significant to a mage. After all, my normal AC is only about 800. That's a large percent increase, right?
Yes, but--who cares? We have to play to our strengths. The strength of a mage is NOT getting hit in melee--if a melee gets on us and we can't get away, we are dead with a 970 AC just as much as with an 800 AC.
Suggestion for a fix: Instead of increasing AC, have Arcane Resilience increase resistances. Even if it is by 1% of your Int score! Or if you are worried about scaling on resists, then just have it add a flat amount to the resists given by Mage Armor.
2. Wand Spec - How many times do we have to beg you to remove this? It is, literally, useless. Even as filler. I don't like to say that about talents--most of them are good for something. But Wand spec?? Maybe Alliance gets some use out of it, wanding for paladin mana from Judgments, but for the Horde, if you aren't DPSing, you are Evocing, sucking mana gems or potions. The very, very small amount of time you spend actually DPSing with a wand would never, ever justify even a single talent point in it, let alone 5.
3. Improved Arcane Explosion. This isn't as bad as the other two. But suffers from a simple problem that I don't know if the Devs took into account: 5% crit in Arcane is worth 1/2 5% crit in Frost, and less than 1/2 5% crit in Fire. Why? Because Arcane does not have a talent that increases the damage bonus for crits. So, 5% crit is 2.5% more damage, because crits only do half again the damage of the spell, not double.
Also, IAE will not work with Master of the Elements, so you don't get that synergy for the +crit chance either. All you get is a reduction in agro due to Arcane Subt, but usually if you are AEing your concern isn't agro--you are going to get it one way or the other (even when I had max of the current Arcane Subt, with -40% agro, I still got agro with IAE).
I actually like Magic Attunement, unlike some. And I don't think Arcane Focus is *bad*--it is just a +DPS talent for Arcane when Arcane isn't used for DPS, so it is reduced to a sheep-resist reduction. But let's leave those out of it. IAE, Wand Spec, and Arcane Resilience are 11 sub-par to useless filler points. (And if you counted Arcane Focus, that would be 16 of them.) That's too many filler points.
- Pyroblast is still sub-par. Why would anyone take this talent unless they had Presence of Mind? And why should a signature talent of the Fire tree be relegated to a support talent of the Arcane Tree?
Suggestion for a fix: Decrease Pyroblast's casting time, or increase the amount of +damage applied to it (see "the Ugly", below, for more on +damage problems).
- Master of the Elements doesn't work with Blizzard. Was this intended? Master of the Elements seems perfect for Blizzard--mages willing to specialize in AEs could gain a huge amount of mana back.... except Blizzard does not crit, and so will never gain mana from Master of the Elements (nor will it gain the threat-free damage from crits, but that's a small point).
Suggestion for a fix: Decrease the per-wave damage of Blizzard, but make it able to crit. I do not understand why it is handled like a DoT anyway. It should be a "wave" spell, like Arcane Missiles (which can crit), since you can move out from under it.
The Ugly
I reserve this section for large problems that it seems were not addressed. It is possible they will be addressed outside a talent review, but if so I am sure I am not alone in saying that the mage community would like to *hear* there is more to come.
There are only two things that I think were under-addressed: Survivability and the underpinnings of +damage (and it's crazy consequences).
1. Survivability - This was partially addressed with the new Wards (though I am not super-impressed by them), and with the improvement to Frost Armor. For pure Frost mages, Survivability was addressed with a big boost to Ice Barrier. (It was NOT addressed by Arcane Resiliance. See above.)
However, for non-31-point Frost mages, your main survivability options are not your wards. They are Blink and Frost Nova. Any attempt at improvement of mage survivability that doesn't address these two spells will probably not help us significantly.
I am asking for tweaks, here, not huge changes. But they are important tweaks.
- Blink - This ability is still bugged, and I know that's not part of the talent review. But what happened to the ideas of it occasionally dropping target (to help a little bit with ranged casters), or allowing us to blink in the direction we are facing?
If Blink would . . .
a) Not bug.
b) Blink in the direction you are looking.
c) One of the following: Blink farther away; remove a single snare effect; or occasionally drop us from target
... it would go a long way to fixing survivability issues.
- Frost Nova - Frost Nova is good against melee, but almost worthless against casters. Again, I am not asking for a big boost, but as a tweak:
Restore the Frost Nova "bug" from the test servers awhile back. The one where, when you are Frost Nova'd, you can't spin in place or turn around. Why you can spin while frozen to the ground is beyond me anyway. This allowed a mage to Frost Nova a caster, and Blink behind him to avoid being cast on for a time.
It was fun. It was dynamic. It helped against casters but wasn't overpowered (in my opinion), since Nova still breaks on a caster just like it does melee after a single hit or two.
Those two small tweaks--small improvements to Blink, and a small change to how Frost Nova works--would, in my opinion, balance the scales on survivability.
Now, the big one: +damage
2. Revamp +damage
Tseric, you said something about the Devs looking at individual spells and how they worked with +damage, and fixing them. I hope that's still on the table as an alternative. My approach is something I have posted before, and it is more comprehensive, but I will take what I can get.
To be brief, the problems with +damage all stem from either the 3.5 second "cap" on the amount of damage you can get (all spells with casting times or channel times of less than 3.5 seconds lose out), and with instant cast spells with long cooldowns that receive less than 3.5 seconds worth of damage (because you can't spam them).
Two simple changes would fix +damage:
- Step 1 to Fixing +damage: Channeled spells with casting durations longer than 3.5 seconds should get extra +damage.
* Spells this would fix: Blizzard, Arcane Missiles.
This should scale with the duration of the channeled effect. This is because spells with channel times over 3.5 seconds are "losing" plus damage for no good reason.
This solution avoids the twin pitfalls of the One-Shot-Pyroblast and the WTF-Owned-By-A-DoT.
* One-Shot-Pyro Problem: Damage done all at once by a long CT spell, like Pyro, can one-shot people if you apply extra plus damage based on CT; so instead, only apply extra plus damage with channeled spells that do periodic damage over time and can be interrupted or fled from.
* WTF-Owned-By-A-DoT Problem: Damage from DoTs is a "cast and forget it" sort of damage that would increase hugely due to their long durations. But since they are also not channeled, they wouldn't get extra damage with this change.
- Step 2 to Fixing +damage: Instant-cast spells with a cooldown greater than 3.5 seconds should get 3.5 seconds worth of plus damage.
* Spells this would fix: Fireblast, Cone of Cold, Blastwave.
Spells that do not receive the full amount of plus damage yet cannot be cast multiple times in quick succession suffer under the current +damage system.
The theory of tying the percentage of +damage you receive to its casting time is that, while the amount of +damage per spell goes down, the amount of +damage you receive over time stays the same, because the spell can be cast multiple times in a row to make up the difference.
However, that doesn't work properly for any spell with a cooldown. To fix this, you need to give spells with a cooldown greater than 3.5 seconds (the max CT for +damage) the full amount of plus damage.
If Blizzard does not do this, then spells with cooldowns (like Fireblast) will slowly lose ground over time to spells without cooldowns. This is already starting to occur at high levels of +damage--once you get a lot of +damage gear, it is less worth it to cast a Fireblast (and incur the 1.5 second global cooldown) than to simply keep spamming Fireball or Frostbolt.
Thanks. Sorry for the length, but I hope it is useful.
http://ctprofiles.net/7050
www.stratagem-guild.com
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-mage&t=916579&p=#post916579 | | | Poster: Tseric at 5/8/2006 12:58:48 PM PDT
Subject: Re: Mage Review - The Good, the Bad, and the |
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Good commentary. A lot of solid points in this read. There is only one thing I really need to blurt out at this time.
Q u o t e:
So long as Blizzard doesn't focus on agro-control again, as they did in BWL, this is not a big issue.
I'm glad you can understand this point. When fighting C'Thun, can you say you are experiencing similar aggro issues, in phase 2 as an example?
BWL was definitely constructed with aggro management issues in mind and to make them somewhat more restricted and challenging. However, this is a dungeon design issue, not a mage balance issue. It is a situation in which a mage encounters difficulty due to the nature of the encounter, not an excuse for an aggro-dump, which it is commonly used as.
This has the significance of fire resists when I started posting back in November. Everyone was all hot and bothered that the mage class was screwed due to fire resist dungeons. Where are they now?
Anyways, good post. Thanks.
Repo man's got all night, every night!
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-mage&t=916579&p=#post916821 | Poster: Tseric at 5/8/2006 1:17:59 PM PDT
Subject: Re: Mage Review - The Good, the Bad, and the |
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Q u o t e:
Tseric,
Thank you very much for the reply.
I agree completely. C'Thun there are no agro issues whatsoever, because you are switching targets so often (and C'Thun himself, of course, just doesn't work that way).
The same is true for Frankiss (since you are switching to snakes), Sartura (since she has random agro anyway), Prophet (just split your attacks between different mobs), and to some extent Twin Emps (depending on strategy--but this is one encounter where Salvation would help mages to DPS).
If the Devs continue to design encounters in a similar vein, threat issues will be moot (at least for guilds that have BWL on farm status). However, what concerns me on that score is the lurking difference between Horde and Alliance mages for future agro encounters. Maybe Shaman changes will address that, however.
Thanks again for taking the time to engage the mage community in a dialog. Please ignore the haters! Most of us think you do a good job.
It is a concern to balance out such issues like the Shaman/Pally one you brought up. Discussion is happening with regard to that.
I will tell you this, Naxrammas is not going to be what people expect, with this all-frost or all-shadow guesswork, though.
Repo man's got all night, every night!
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-mage&t=916579&p=#post916994 |
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