07-17-2005, 06:57 AM
Lissa,Jul 16 2005, 05:19 PM Wrote:How many instant cast spells does a Mage have?
Two.
Three with talents, but two of those three are simply unusable in most situations, and one of them offers significantly less DPS than just about any other spell in the mage's arsenal.
Quote:of those 5 instant cast spells Warlocks have
How about that.
Quote:Shadow vulnerability is the same across any class that has this kind of power. Priests have it in their shadow tree (possibly something in holy too, but I don't remember there being anything like this), and Mages have similar things as well, atleast something in Arcane and Cold.
Actually, there's only one vulnerability power for mages, and that's Improved Scorch, which requires five applications of a low-DPS spell and an application once every five seconds thereafter to keep up. Your vulnerability talent requires just a crit shadowbolt.
Quote:Likewise, if we were to sit down and have me, you, and Quark all attack the same kind of mob, go all out as best we could with everyone starting at the same point, I guarentee that Quark would win on who would kill the mob the quickest, you would very likely come in second because you have a very reliable way of gaining distance from the mob along with a number of useful instant cast spells, and I would likely come in third because I could not reliably get the mob out of my face and would be getting interrupted constantly and most of my instants are DoTs.
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Yes, and just how much soloing do we do at this stage of our level 60ness? Attacking a tanked mob, even assuming that I can use fire, my best damage is chaining fireballs with a fireblast every now and then. Cone of Cold if I don't have to worry about breaking CC. Chain shadowbolts are less than this, certainly, but the moment you crit once, you have +20% damage on your next four shadowbolts. I can crit once and get about 400 more damage on ignite, which is something like 50% of another fireball.
And let's not even talk about the sustainability issue. You can go on shooting those shadowbolts forever with bandages and lifetap: I shoot myself dry in about a minute and a half. I can evoc back about 5k mana, but even if it's available I'm reduced to wanding and hoping for Judgment of Wisdom procs after two and a half minutes, max.