01-30-2007, 11:24 PM
Leaving aside the discussion on how much of a nerf this is, I'd just like to weigh in on the necessity of the nerf itself, which I don't really understand that much. Pre-nerf, mages were already behind warlocks in terms of damage (and given warlocks' substantially greater utility, and potential damage increase through multidotting - which blows area-effect ANYTHING out of the water - I don't know that even THAT was a good idea). Now we're behind shadow priests, too. Where all classes are concerned, we're behind locks, shadow priests, rogues, enhancement shaman and well geared feral druids. Surely Polymorph is not so good that we have to be so bad at DPS?
The really incomprehensible part is the nerf to Frost. Fire is the real damage-dealing spec, and though it's behind many other classes, it's not behind by a massive margin (even though it shouldn't be behind). Frost was already down there with smiteapriests and behind moonkin; now it's the lowest DPS spec of any class, period. It's basically a useless toy spec now, and I don't think they really wanted to do that.
As for fire, I suspect a lot of their "too much damage" concerns are because they are testing with fireball rank 14, which they left off the trainers on Live. It's clear that they didn't intend to remove it, because the level 70 Pyroblast is still there; the level 70 Fireball just isn't. Having that would make life a little better.
The really incomprehensible part is the nerf to Frost. Fire is the real damage-dealing spec, and though it's behind many other classes, it's not behind by a massive margin (even though it shouldn't be behind). Frost was already down there with smiteapriests and behind moonkin; now it's the lowest DPS spec of any class, period. It's basically a useless toy spec now, and I don't think they really wanted to do that.
As for fire, I suspect a lot of their "too much damage" concerns are because they are testing with fireball rank 14, which they left off the trainers on Live. It's clear that they didn't intend to remove it, because the level 70 Pyroblast is still there; the level 70 Fireball just isn't. Having that would make life a little better.