January News/Discussion

[Taelas]

Replace Mage with Warlock, and your sentence will be correct.

Instant invisibility + Evocation that heals, Ice Block, Ice Barrier, half CC/DOT duration with Mage Armor, and BLINK make them the absolutely most slippery caster in this game.

In contrast, all a Warlock has is... ONE cooldown that he is often required to use offensively to get kills... Which, being an offensive spell gets absorbed by Cloak of Shadows, if it is used in the fraction of a second of freedom he may have from the opening stunlock.

Yes, there are 2K rated warlocks. Yes, just about every match they play against a rogue is an insta-loss. Yes, mages tear them a new one too.

Instant invisibility is 25 points deep in Arcane. Ice Barrier is 30 points deep in Frost. That leaves 12 points. Blink is on a cooldown and only transports them 20 yards (and if Arcane, gives them a 30% resist/miss chance for 4 seconds). Mage Armor reduces magic effects by 50%, not CC/dots. Some dots and some CC are magic, true, but not all. Evocation is interrupted on ANY damage whatsoever and has a 5 min CD (and the heal requires a glyph). Ice Block simply postpones the inevitable (though postponing it can also get rid of it if you've popped CDs obviously).

Mages are slippery, true, but warlocks are far more capable of taking a beating than they are.

Auto attacks they mean exactly nothing. As long as all classes are meant to compete for dps in a pve situation, the damage output MUST closely match. The only thing then that can balance the fundameltal difference of a melee and ranged in pvp is the burst damage potential and survieability.

Auto-attacks matter a great deal. It amounts from anywhere between 40% to 60% of some classes' total damage (though 60% is rather poor). Ranged classes like warlocks and mages do not have auto-attacks. They need that last 40% on their specials.

Bizzard has seen fit to give all (or most at least) classes an "oh #$%&" cooldown and high stamina, including "glass cannons". You're not a glass cannon when someone can hit you for "immune" or reduced by x% damage and you have as much health as the player not wearing pajamas. :P

Sigh.

Mages have the lowest amount of armor in the game with the exception of priests. Yes, they have some decent panic buttons... but that's it. A mage is a glass cannon, whether you accept it or not.

I drew you a picture to demonstrate my fundamental point. The green circle is the area of influence of a melee class, the red is one of a ranged class. Hopefully the difference here is clear and not under debate.

Please stop insulting me.

Let me put this another way going back to the original post. This mage pops AP POM and various other cooldowns. Suppose this was melee popping some analog of these cooldowns. How does the ranged escape? He moves out of the green circle or pops some "oh #$%&" cooldown. To escape from the mage cooldowns is the same, but the circle is much much bigger meaning the "oh #$%&" cooldown is the more likely option. It should also be noted in a pure slugging match the mage gets to blow his cooldowns as soon as a melee enters the red circle, the melee must simply take that damage until he can bring the mage into his green circle, meaning the melee will ALWAYS start at a health disadvantage.

So, giving melee a high burst makes up for that pelting they HAVE to take while moving through that red zone. An alternative would be giving melee more "oh #$%&" buttons than ranged has, but I think in the interest of gameplay ranged classes should have a reason to attack from range.

Bull. Charge. Stealth. Short-burst speed increases. Mounts. There are half a dozen ways of getting close to a ranged class without them opening up on you first.

And you can always LOS a ranged class. Let me know how that works out against a melee character.