Coming Soon: Changes for mages

[Skandranon]

Knowing what I do of your playing, I'm interested in some expansion on this point. From everything I've heard and the WWS' I've seen, while hunters are no longer simple MDBots in a raid, they are still pretty close, being topped by just about everything (other than mages) on end game 25man raids...but you are saying that they are tops in the ranged dps category. Does this imply that all ranged dps needs some help, or that what I've been seeing is atypical?

Well, let's throw out a couple WWS parses. Check quick because they expire today.

Teron Gorefiend
Essence of Suffering

These are two Black Temple encounters. Teron is commonly considered the fourth boss of the instance. Essence of Suffering is the first phase of the Reliquary of Souls encounter. Both of these encounters are simply "stand still and nuke away" encounters with DPS essentially standing still and performing max-DPS cycles until the boss falls over. Teron has a "ghost" mechanic that causes randomly selected players to have to run to the back of the room and die, but of the top DPSers in that parse, only Fayne received the debuff and died from it prior to the boss death. Essence of Suffering has no such mechanic at all; the special attribute of that phase is that aggro is not a concern, so DPS classes can go all out. Rakuten and Voomer are BM hunters in this parse; Twistedone is Survival.

The numbers more or less speak for themselves. I wouldn't say what you've been seeing is "atypical" because the typical case for players of any class is that they're not very good at it, and hunter class mechanics are far more punishing of mistakes than the mechanics of any other class. Weak hunter parses are, for the most part, quite typical - but they are also not what Blizzard is balancing around. Beastmaster hunters are 100% viable and powerful when properly played.

The problem is pretty specific to mages. While there wasn't any mage on Teron, you can see me down at eighth place on the EoS parse, in a dead heat with our enhancement shaman - and, as you can see, using the broken 2.2 MSD/TLC/AM build. While 2.3 undid the coefficient nerfs, they also applied heavy nerfs to a spec that was...competing for eighth. Unnerfed fire is about the same, perhaps a little higher than that 2.2 build.

As long as you're looking at the parses, you can take note of Noxt, a destruction warlock. You'll note that he beats me in the EoS parse and comes in fourth in the Teron parse. He does not have his 4-piece Tier 6 bonus (+6% to shadow bolt and incinerate damage). I do have my 4-piece Tier 6 (+5% to fireball, frostbolt and arcane missiles damage). Despite the fact that I substantially outgear him and that I am using a talent and equipment setup deemed abusive and nerfed by Blizzard in 2.3, he still has an edge of about 150 DPS on me. Now, the 1528 DPS I'm doing is fine; you can beat Essence of Suffering with all of your DPS classes doing 1528 DPS. On the other hand, why, exactly, when he has so much more utility than I do and is so much more survivable than I am, does he need to also dominate me in DPS?

[Mirajj]

Snipped Stuff

Ah, I see why the results are 'atypical'. I tend to look at overall reports, and very rarely do I look at encounter specific ones. Stand and nuke fights are (as I understand it, though my experience is limited to early SSC only) very rare now. Take the report as a whole, as I tend to, and the hunters all the sudden drop from first-ish to 9, 10, and 11. I wonder why they topped a rogue and warlock, and figure that both those those two had many deaths, or, as their dps time is low (60%-ish) they weren't there for fights that the hunters were. All the sudden the fearsome ranged DPS class (who, overall, are even under your mage) are now at the bottom of the dps pile, instead of the top.

Looking further through the parses you provide, it seems to me that your hunters are either at the top, or at the bottom of a fight. This is interesting to me, though they seem far more 'at the bottom' than at the top.

So, the solution to "buffing" hunters? Making all fights 'stand and deliver' style. =D

[Skandranon]

Ah, I see why the results are 'atypical'. I tend to look at overall reports, and very rarely do I look at encounter specific ones.

Overall reports are terribly misleading. For one thing, the inclusion of trash damage, which nobody cares about, skews the meters remarkably. Typically, hunters need to trap things on trash, which is a more time-consuming process than other forms of crowd control. Also, Black Temple has a number of AoE-trash packs (and a few packs which are not AoE but which we do that way anyway), which hugely skew the meter in favour of classes that can hit more than one thing at a time.

Looking further through the parses you provide, it seems to me that your hunters are either at the top, or at the bottom of a fight. This is interesting to me, though they seem far more 'at the bottom' than at the top.

Well, of the other fights contained in that parse, only Naj'entus and Bloodboil are anything close to fair. Supremus is a fight where the amount of damage done by any ranged class is completely random and not particularly correlated with anything, Akama is a fight that lasts approximately thirty seconds long, which gives classes equipped with burst trinkets and DPS cooldowns to have near-maximum uptime. And those are the only two parses where hunters are clearly low.

Go ahead and look at Naj'entus, and Bloodboil tries 1 and 2. They exhibit more or less the same pattern, even though a hunter isn't in the #1 slot. (Obviously, the Bloodboil death parse isn't a good indicator because the BM hunters both wind up dead fairly early on.) Unless the hunter simply can't attack their target, they will do great damage.

In terms of the pure "stand and deliver" fights, 3/5 Hyjal encounters and 4/9 Black Temple encounters fit that category, so it's a solid half of them. That's certainly nothing to scoff at.

[Mirajj]

Hm, I need to get me into these places, and have a look around, then.;)

[Skandranon]

If they need to make it so all mages have IB, they're basically rehasing the Nef fight's class calls which would be fairly boring now matter what you try to do. If that's their reasoning to make it so all mages have IB, I say to them, go rethink your fight and come up with a better mechanism than to have a one trick solution of turning a talent into a class skill. All the other talents they shifted to class skills prior to this were necessary, but to design fights around the Nef class call aspect to justify giving a talent as a class skill is silly and wasteful time spent (and probably boring for every raider that has seen that type of fight).

It may be all of those things, but if they're doing it, they're doing it. Nef is a great example, but instead of saying that they might copy it, I prefer to take it as an example of how they can make creative encounters that challenge every class in different ways, and that they certainly can do it again in Sunwell.

Even if it doesn't specifically require Ice Block, one thing to keep in mind is that any form of environmental damage that inflicts a roughly equal amount of damage to anyone it hits automatically hits mages proportionately harder. Because Blizzard is so attached to including Spirit on mage gear, mages have among the least stamina of any class, and lack the priest's ability to shield and heal to counteract low hit points. (As an aside, redesigning Evocation to be a percentage of maximum mana and gutting Arcane spec has made all the Spirit completely worthless, causing ~15-20% of itemization points on even Tier 6 gear to go to waste.) Proper employment of Ice Block can at least negate one or two attacks. Obviously it's not the same as having more stamina, but "different but equivalent" is part of the goal of balance.

[Kevin]

(As an aside, redesigning Evocation to be a percentage of maximum mana and gutting Arcane spec has made all the Spirit completely worthless, causing ~15-20% of itemization points on even Tier 6 gear to go to waste.)

And this is exactly why I don't expect too much in the way of further talent and skill tweaking for mages. As mentioned the tweaks are aimed at the high end. New content hits and the mage gear no longer has spirit on it and that buffs mages some more because they have better itemized gear.


This happened with hunters, and is part of why as I played my hunter deeper into content I laughed even more at the people who didn't understand hunters and still thought they weren't powerful enough. Hunter CC is used all the time when dealing with at level/gearing content. It was used a lot when first learning and early farming of Kara (less and less as gearing got better but that is true for all CC). It's very handy on Mags when learning to back up warlocks (we only had 2 locks on our first kill). It's used all the time on SSC trash. With our 2 nights a week of raiding we've been focusing mostly on SSC [Lurker, Hydross, Morogrim all on farm] so I haven't seen TK first hand but it's used there too from what I've read) And hunters are consistently fighting for the top spots on damage in all those instances assuming most of the raid is in the same gearing level (this isn't always the case for cloth wearers. Mages and locks are often ahead of the gearing curve due the power of tailoring but when the hunters get the drops to close that gap the move back up the charts). And as you've shown this continues in BT and Hyjal. So hunters bring tons of utility for trash, good utility for bosses and tons of damage. Gearing had some issues for hunters but they fixed a fair bit of that too (giving pretty hefty buffs to hunters with the bow change that came along with the change to agi and RAP but too many hunters didn't understand that impact either and thought they got nerfed when in fact they got buffed and made it a lot easier for Blizzard to do future itemization for hunters). Many people can't always look past the gearing issues to see what the class is actually like and I'm just glad to see someone else that understands that hunters aren't broken and very rarely have been if you understand how to play one. :)

[Artega]

On the other hand, why, exactly, when he has so much more utility than I do and is so much more survivable than I am, does he need to also dominate me in DPS?

Because you are that from which the sacred conjured water flows, and without such a bountiful resource, his DPS would falter!

[Klaus]

Because you are that from which the sacred conjured water flows, and without such a bountiful resource, his DPS would falter!

No it wouldn't - he's a warlock. Warlocks don't need to drink, you silly person!

[Lissa]

I can see why Noxt is ahead of you. He has the backing of two shadow priests giving him Shadow Weaving. You have only yourself to put up the Scorch debuff. Since you have to drop Scorch into your rotation, this is costing you DPS. He on the other hand is only needing to Life Tap on occasion to keep his mana up. If you had a couple more Mages there with rolling Scorches, I'm sure you'd be ahead of Noxt in overall damage as you would have to add Scorch into your rotation less often.

[Skandranon]

I can see why Noxt is ahead of you. He has the backing of two shadow priests giving him Shadow Weaving. You have only yourself to put up the Scorch debuff.

The parses are from 2.2 when I was using the "broken" Arcane spec which has no need to put up Scorch.

[Taelas]

Lissa, that WWS was Skan spamming Arcane Missiles. Scorch wasn't used once.

EDIT: Skandranon, as an aside, what would you say is the "optimal" raid DPS build for a mage post-2.3.2? Something like 2/48/11?

[Skandranon]

EDIT: Skandranon, as an aside, what would you say is the "optimal" raid DPS build for a mage post-2.3.2? Something like 2/48/11?

Yes, that's almost exactly the build I think would be best for raid DPS. There's been a suggestion that Icy Veins, with it's "+chance to freeze with chill effects", probably has 3 points in Frostbite as its prerequisite, in which case I'd drop a point out of Improved Frostbolt and lose Improved Frost Nova to satisfy that requirement.

[Taelas]

Yes, that's almost exactly the build I think would be best for raid DPS. There's been a suggestion that Icy Veins, with it's "+chance to freeze with chill effects", probably has 3 points in Frostbite as its prerequisite, in which case I'd drop a point out of Improved Frostbolt and lose Improved Frost Nova to satisfy that requirement.

I doubt they would add prerequisites (at least without giving us a free respec). It would mess up a lot of builds that do not have Frostbite but still have Cold Snap.

But yeah, if they do, that's what I would do as well; the Frost talents are only to get you up to Icy Veins anyway.

[Swiss Mercenary]

Because you are that from which the sacred conjured water flows, and without such a bountiful resource, his DPS would falter!

Since 2.3, a raid only needs one mage to buff AI and conjure water.

[Frag]

Since 2.3, a raid only needs one mage to buff AI and conjure water.

With that attitude, you could just have them parked outside and get the same effects, no?

Yeesh,
~Frag :blink:

[Quark]

Rogues - Shadowstep.

Okay, you're cut off. No more talking about Rogues for you. In the myriad of changes they've managed to make to Shadowstep while still not getting down to the core idea of it sucks, it's still a 41-point Subtlety talent (oh hey, that's the main reason it's so bad - it's too deep in a somewhat bad tree overall, and a complete waste of time tree for daggers!)

Re: Cloak of Shadows. Yes, that was a talent in beta. At the time it was a talent, Rogues were being given one less new skill than every other class. They had two disconnects - Rogues were weak, and Rogues weren't given enough skills. Partially fixed in one shot.

[Taelas]

Okay, you're cut off. No more talking about Rogues for you. In the myriad of changes they've managed to make to Shadowstep while still not getting down to the core idea of it sucks, it's still a 41-point Subtlety talent (oh hey, that's the main reason it's so bad - it's too deep in a somewhat bad tree overall, and a complete waste of time tree for daggers!)

Re: Cloak of Shadows. Yes, that was a talent in beta. At the time it was a talent, Rogues were being given one less new skill than every other class. They had two disconnects - Rogues were weak, and Rogues weren't given enough skills. Partially fixed in one shot.

Bah. I'm not a rogue. I was thinking of Cloak of Shadows, but got 'em mixed up in my head.<_<

So yeah, you're right, I shouldn't talk about rogues.

[Swiss Mercenary]

With that attitude, you could just have them parked outside and get the same effects, no?

Takes too long.

[Xame]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...968115908&sid=1
I'm not too up on mage mechanics, but is the gem change enough to make mages less dependent on shadow priests? Combined with what looks like Frost raid viability I think it's possible that this is enough.

Does this drive the nail that the Mystical Skyfire Diamond cooldown put into the raiding arcane build's coffin even deeper?

The gem thing is just a drop in the bucket that didn't scale well when they put TBC out. In PvE or PvP its always a choice between heathstone and mana gem for that cool down. On our last Void Reaver I went through ~36k mana (12k base + 12k VE + 6k Evo + 6k other w/ includes gems). The priest is still a huge part of my mana pool. Every mage has a macro to eat the gems in order. Its just a simplification to give us one gem and add a little bit more to it to make it tempting to eat (requires a more fight aware decision of risking your health bar or push dps).

As far as the Ice Block / Ice Veins move, that is an absolutely huge mage change. Ideally Blizzard should have added new spells for mages in TBC to counter the Stamina changes. Mages and Priest have been in the #$%& hopper of TBC with the original design spec not being to Blizzard's liking. Mages pre-TBC could kill anyone in a 1/2shot and could be killed by any class equally fast if jumped. This high level of one-shotting was even made fun of in many mage videos. Priests when overgeared solo healing raid encounters I'm sure left a bad taste with Blizzard (also shown in several videos). Welcome to the TBC nerf bat Stamina changes. Both classes turned into buff classes with better choices for raids.

The effect of IB / Ice Veins is that Mages now have a cookie cutter PvE build that removes any real room for choice. Ice Veins is just too good not to pick up and that removes much if any debate about the Arcane/Fire blend. Now its Fire with crafted gear + Ice Veins. The IB + shield were two big reasons for frost in raids. With IB trainable, I'm not sure the shield is the value item for a frost PvE build (frost still rules PvP but not as much as it once did).

Are Arcane mages dead? No. The IB + Arcane PoM/Pyro mages will now be very scary in Arena. The greatest weakness of an Arcane mage in PvP was they had no defense. It is an all offense spec. Add in the IB as a free PvP "aggro wipe" and you have a lot of dps with a very good defensive move. No more focus killing any mage in Arena. Absolutely game changing.

In PvE, Arcane was on life support and is now dead. 2.3 and Ice Veins as the killer talent at 11pts (unless they hit it with a huge nerf bat before release) have just removed any hope of building a reasonable Arcane build.

For the Terenas Lurkers, just FYI: I've done fire, frost, and now arcane. Its time to go back to fire :angry: and have the dipping bird peck my fireball key. Goodbye complex (and fun) Arcane spell rotations. I'll test on the PTR when its available.

[Artega]

Seems to me making Icy Veins increase casting speed for all types of spells is a little silly; wouldn't that be better off in the Arcane tree, since it's an element-neutral tree?

Then again, Death Wish is a Fury-like move and they put it in Arms. Oh, and they moved Weapon Mastery - which practically screams Arms-themed - into Fury. Blizzard isn't making much sense these days.