Coming Soon: Changes for mages

[Concillian]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...968115908&sid=1

There are a few nice improvements we're making to the mage class in patch 2.3.2 (a small patch that will be on the public test realms soon) and we wanted to share them with you. First, we'll start out with two changes affecting all mages. Ice block will become a core ability, trainable by all mages at level 30. Additionally, conjure mana (rank 6) will restore 1800-3000 mana and will now have three charges, meaning you can use it three times before having to create a new one.

To be sure we're clear here, yes, the same cooldown will still apply between usages.:P

Cold snap will be moved to Ice block's position in the talent tree and its cooldown will be reduced. As a side note, it will no longer reset the cooldown on fire ward. Moving in to Cold snap's spot will be a brand new ability called Icy Veins. This new ability will decrease casting time for all spells by 20% and increases the chance that chilling effects freeze the target by 25%. It's an active ability, lasting 20 seconds and has a 3 minute cooldown.

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?

[Lissa]

Am I the only one that is getting sick of watching them throw all kinds of talents to Mages for free while doing very little for the other classes, ie, what was a long time talent was turned into a class skill? There are tons of talents that should just be made outright class skills for all the classes, but Mages continue to be the one class where they turn long running talents into class skills.

[Taelas]

...:huh:

They've turned one talent into a spell for mages so far -- Evocation. They've done so for other classes as well (druids, warriors, just to name a few).

You're going way overboard here. I'm not exactly a fan of the Ice Block change either, but saying that they "throw all kinds of talents to Mages for free" is just not true.

Conc, the gem change sounds pretty awesome. Rank 5 restores 1136-1364 mana, so on average it's doubled up. The gems are unique, so currently you have to use different ranks to have more gems, so it's a VERY significant change -- on average, ~100% extra mana on the first gem, ~120% on the second, and a whopping ~180% on the third. Very nice.

[Lissa]

...:huh:

They've turned one talent into a spell for mages so far -- Evocation. They've done so for other classes as well (druids, warriors, just to name a few).

You're going way overboard here. I'm not exactly a fan of the Ice Block change either, but saying that they "throw all kinds of talents to Mages for free" is just not true.

Ok, name one class, besides shaman and paladin, that has had *one* talent fully turned into a class skill? You can't cause Blizzard hasn't done so, yet there are a number of talents through out the various classes that are almost must have or should be class skills. Numerous players of various classes have pointed out why certain talents should be changed to class skills, but the Mages on the WoW forums say that they need X talent turned into a class skill or Y cooldown decreased and Blizzard jumps and gives it to them while Blizzard generall ignores everyone else even though a lot of people have made very good thought out arguements why certain talents should become class skills and Blizzard does nothing about it. To me I'm getting sick of watching Blizzard coddle certain classes while never taking in any of the other construtive thoughts presented by players to make certain aspects of other classes play better.

And as Tal mentions, changing untalented Arcane Explosion from being a 1.5 s cast to instant (another change from talent to full class skill). There's more than just Evocation that the Mages have gotten for free.

[Tal]

...:huh:

They've turned one talent into a spell for mages so far -- Evocation. They've done so for other classes as well (druids, warriors, just to name a few).

You're going way overboard here. I'm not exactly a fan of the Ice Block change either, but saying that they "throw all kinds of talents to Mages for free" is just not true.

Conc, the gem change sounds pretty awesome. Rank 5 restores 1136-1364 mana, so on average it's doubled up. The gems are unique, so currently you have to use different ranks to have more gems, so it's a VERY significant change -- on average, ~100% extra mana on the first gem, ~120% on the second, and a whopping ~180% on the third. Very nice.

Didn't they change Arcane Explosion from talented instant to instant for all? There are others that are tickling the back of my memory but having not played my mage for quite some time its not something I've tracked.

[Treesh]

Ok, name one class, besides shaman and paladin, that has had *one* talent fully turned into a class skill?

Cloak of shadows - Rogue. Stance Mastery - warrior.

I will admit, I had to actually think about Shaman for a minute there and then I finally remembered the two-handers, now that they're basically useless if you are serious about any kind of melee DPS.

Edit: Forgot about innervate for all druids. Holy fire for priests (although if you choose to not count that one, that's understandable). Fear ward for all priests now (even nerfed to all hell).

[Lissa]

Cloak of shadows - Rogue. Stance Mastery - warrior.

I will admit, I had to actually think about Shaman for a minute there and then I finally remembered the two-handers, now that they're basically useless if you are serious about any kind of melee DPS.

Edit: Forgot about innervate for all druids. Holy fire for priests (although if you choose to not count that one, that's understandable). Fear ward for all priests now (even nerfed to all hell).

Technically, Cloak of Shadows got changed before it was introduced live. Also, Tactical Mastery is halfish with all warriors maintaining only 10 rage with potential of keeping 25 rage if they take TM fully so I consider that only a half change talent. Innervate I had forgetten about, same with Holy Fire, but Fear Ward was a racial, not a talent. Thing is, there hasn't been any talents converted to class skills for Rogues, Warlocks, Hunters, or Warriors (technically for Warriors). I have seen numerous suggestions from all of the classes listed about various talents converted to class skills with very good backing as to why they should be changed and Blizzard has ignored them.

So now Mages will have had atleast 3 Talents (that I can think of) converted to class skills while there are several classes that haven't even seen one talent converted to a class skill and several classes that got a talent converted to a class skill while Mages get a talent converted to a class skill frivalously (Ice Block).

[Klaus]

Rogues, Warlocks, Hunters, or Warriors

Hmm. Now what is it about that list that pops out to me? Oh yes, they're all very powerful classes.

[Concillian]

If development of WoW were handled "we gave this class something so we have to give all the other classes something like it" the game would be unplayably bad.

1) Mana has always been a very significant issue for mages in both PvE and PvP. Mages were extremely dependent on shadow priests in the raiding game.

2) Iceblock from talent --> trained ability isn't going to change much. The good PvP mages will still be frost. The other builds will be a little less glass cannon, but will still lack PvP utility. Overall little to no impact on the PvE aspect of the game.

It's hard to be too negative about the changes, they really do fill significant holes. Unless, of course, you just like to whine for the sake of whining.

[Lissa]

If development of WoW were handled "we gave this class something so we have to give all the other classes something like it" the game would be unplayably bad.

1) Mana has always been a very significant issue for mages in both PvE and PvP. Mages were extremely dependent on shadow priests in the raiding game.

2) Iceblock from talent --> trained ability isn't going to change much. The good PvP mages will still be frost. The other builds will be a little less glass cannon, but will still lack PvP utility. Overall little to no impact on the PvE aspect of the game.

It's hard to be too negative about the changes, they really do fill significant holes. Unless, of course, you just like to whine for the sake of whining.

The point is, it's a frivalous change to give Ice Block to all mages. You yourself said it, it doesn't help mages in any serious way. As such, it should be left alone, it doesn't fill an adequate change. I won't argue the issue involving the mana gems because I can see the issue, but I will say that Mages get their way far more often than any other class in WoW. IMO, frivalous changes like Ice Block should not be made and it seems that the whining and crying that non-frost mages made on the WoW forums is where you should really direct your whining charge.

And Klaus, Mages are among that list of powerful classes, yet Blizzard continues to cater to them while doing nothing for those other powerful classes. And if you look at the DPS charts, you'll see that Mages are right up there at the top on DPS. If they were not doing so well, I could see boosts being handed out, but in the case of Ice Block, you have a talent that is being given as a class skill frivalously.

[LochnarITB]

Oh, screw you Blizzard!! Geez! Lochnar has always been a frost mage, long the red headed step child of the mage class. I could do certain things because I chose that tree but now something looks cool to the other trees so you hand it over to coddle the whiners? Explain the logic to me. How does this fire mage suddenly gain the knowledge to deal with that magic? "I throw these massive fireballs and rain down pillars of fire but all that heat requires a cooling system so I can do this one other trick - poof, instant drink cooler!" Also, the mana gem. While I will use it, I don't understand it. Part of playing the class is managing your main resource, mana. "Oh, that's just too hard - let's just buff up that mana pool for them so they have to think even less!" I started to type "ezmode is going to kill WoW" but I think they are counting on just the opposite. The more they dumb it down, and do things like the Tacoma truck ads, the more of the masses they will probably draw in. Cool will kill WoW. Did I tell you about how I discovered gummi bears on my trip to germany 30+ years ago several years before they became cool candy here in the states. Yeah, yeah, just like the rest of you WoW addicts and techno geeks, I'm a man before my time, leading edge on the wave of what's cool!;):lol:

[Watto44]

I'm honestly not sure what Blizzard is trying to accomplish with this change. Sure, it's a nice buff for arcane and fire mages, but I doubt that frost will be knocked off its PvP pedestal. Depending on the way the new talent works and how much the cooldown on Cold Snap is reduced, it's entirely possible that frost will become more powerful.

I have to agree with Lissa, the iceblock change seems rather frivolous.

[Taelas]

Didn't they change Arcane Explosion from talented instant to instant for all? There are others that are tickling the back of my memory but having not played my mage for quite some time its not something I've tracked.

Ah, you're right. I forgot about that one. Mea culpa.

Ok, name one class, besides shaman and paladin, that has had *one* talent fully turned into a class skill? You can't cause Blizzard hasn't done so, yet there are a number of talents through out the various classes that are almost must have or should be class skills.

Let's see here. What talents have, more or less, been turned into class skills?

Mages - Evocation and Improved Arcane Explosion.
Paladins - Consecration and Improved Seal of the Crusader.
Shamans - 2-hand weapons.
Warriors - 2/5ths of Tactical Mastery.
Priests - Holy Fire.
Druids - Innervate.
Rogues - Shadowstep.

Numerous players of various classes have pointed out why certain talents should be changed to class skills, but the Mages on the WoW forums say that they need X talent turned into a class skill or Y cooldown decreased and Blizzard jumps and gives it to them while Blizzard generall ignores everyone else even though a lot of people have made very good thought out arguements why certain talents should become class skills and Blizzard does nothing about it. To me I'm getting sick of watching Blizzard coddle certain classes while never taking in any of the other construtive thoughts presented by players to make certain aspects of other classes play better.

And as Tal mentions, changing untalented Arcane Explosion from being a 1.5 s cast to instant (another change from talent to full class skill). There's more than just Evocation that the Mages have gotten for free.

Yes, I forgot that one. I'll add a note in my defense that Improved Arcane Missiles wasn't a spell, though.

While I agree that there are several talents that could easily be turned into class skills instead, Blizzard most likely has a good reason to avoid doing it.

And quite frankly, Blizzard does not "coddle" ANY class. All classes have seen buffs and nerfs. Blizzard has one of the best balanced MMOs on the market.

The point is, it's a frivalous change to give Ice Block to all mages. You yourself said it, it doesn't help mages in any serious way. As such, it should be left alone, it doesn't fill an adequate change. I won't argue the issue involving the mana gems because I can see the issue, but I will say that Mages get their way far more often than any other class in WoW. IMO, frivalous changes like Ice Block should not be made and it seems that the whining and crying that non-frost mages made on the WoW forums is where you should really direct your whining charge.

They've stated that the change is so they can balance PvE encounters around mages having Ice Block. Quite understandable.
(EDIT: Source.)

And Klaus, Mages are among that list of powerful classes, yet Blizzard continues to cater to them while doing nothing for those other powerful classes. And if you look at the DPS charts, you'll see that Mages are right up there at the top on DPS. If they were not doing so well, I could see boosts being handed out, but in the case of Ice Block, you have a talent that is being given as a class skill frivalously.

Seriously, cut it out. Blizzard has nerfed mages in the past. Counterspell on the GCD was a hefty nerf, as was the coefficiency tax. They were reversed because they were way too much.

I'll also add that mages are currently not among the top damage dealing classes. Rogues and warlocks beat them out of the water with relative ease.

[Artega]

Stance Mastery is not Tactical Mastery. They threw us a bone to make us stop whining, but it's not a real talent-to-skill changeover.

Also, everyone's forgetting that Priests got the old version of Improved Power Word: Shield for free (remember, Weakened Soul used to be 30 seconds with the talent reducing it to 15 seconds), and that's what really set Warriors off; literally less than a week after a Blizzard representative told us (the "Warrior community") that Tactical Mastery would never become a class skill because it went against Blizzard's code of never, ever turning talents into skills, they did exactly that with Priests. I don't recall if the Innervate, Improved Arcane Explosion, and other class changes happened before or after this incident.

Regardless, after seeing the stupid number of buffs Hunters received, I no longer really care about the other classes; this is going to make Arcane and Fire Mages' life expectancy ten seconds longer in PvP, and make Frost Mages even more overpowered than they currently are. But it's nothing compared to Hunters getting both dispel and a 41-yard Mortal Strike.

[Trien]

You forgot Hurricane for druids... once the 31-point balance talent.

(And improved pounce as the 31 feral, lol...)

[Klaus]

And Klaus, Mages are among that list of powerful classes, yet Blizzard continues to cater to them while doing nothing for those other powerful classes. And if you look at the DPS charts, you'll see that Mages are right up there at the top on DPS. If they were not doing so well, I could see boosts being handed out, but in the case of Ice Block, you have a talent that is being given as a class skill frivalously.

Oh, trust me, I was peeved to hear about this change. Fire mages are a pain in the ass in the arena as it is, and this will make them a pain in the ass and make them hard to kill. I truly, truly hate dotting up a mage, only to have them wiped by ice block.

And if you look at a lot of encounters, at least in the Terenas lurkers, the mages are not the #1 damage dealers. Rogues and warlocks are up there, and before he left the game, our elemental shaman was way up there. I frequently beat most of the mages as a shadow priest, and that's with the mages in my group getting the mana return. So, I truly understand the mana gem change.

[Mirajj]

Blizzard has nerfed mages in the past. Counterspell on the GCD was a hefty nerf, as was the coefficiency tax. They were reversed because they were way too much.

I'd not mind seeing the hunter damage tax undone, now that everyone's 70, and the clothies can't whine about being 2-3 shot anymore.

[Skandranon]

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

Eh. The MSD nerf and the nerf to the Lightning Capacitor already firmly nailed down the coffin when 2.3 came out. After a certain point, it's just...dead, and you can't really get deader than dead.

I could go on with a long spiel about Arcane, but they either need to junk the tree and start over or do something better with Arcane Missiles and Arcane Blast. About the only thing Arcane is any good for is AE, and mostly that works well untalented.

What is very true is that this ends raiding mages' investment of more than about 2 points into the Arcane tree. Arcane Concentration's value dropped like a stone the moment shadow priests received Vampiric Touch, but raiding builds kept picking it up mostly because there was nowhere else to put the points. Past 47 in fire, everything is a PvP talent or just bad. Same with Frost, really, although if you wanted frostbite/shatter tricks you could easily, easily discard clearcasting (and many did).

Since we never really needed the mana anyway, any build that doesn't dip 11 into frost to grab Icy Veins is now pretty weak. There's still some people pushing 33/28/0, but its damage was just barely competitive with x/47/x. Take those 47 points and add something that combos with activatable trinkets and flamecap and destruction pots and it simply won't even be comparable.

[Skandranon]

The point is, it's a frivalous change to give Ice Block to all mages. You yourself said it, it doesn't help mages in any serious way. As such, it should be left alone, it doesn't fill an adequate change. I won't argue the issue involving the mana gems because I can see the issue, but I will say that Mages get their way far more often than any other class in WoW. IMO, frivalous changes like Ice Block should not be made and it seems that the whining and crying that non-frost mages made on the WoW forums is where you should really direct your whining charge.

In current content - yeah. There's nothing that Ice Block really does aside from help out on Archimonde a little bit. Most high-end raiding mages know that, in current content, trainable ice block changes nothing.

We'll see what Sunwell is like. After all, they made Innervate trainable specifically because they finally introduced mana limited fights (and the first truly mana-limited fights were introduced in Naxxramas). It may very well be that a Sunwell fight has something that every class needs to be able to answer, and that mages didn't have it. Hard to say. But if Blizzard says (which they basically have) that they're tuning at least one Sunwell encounter around the assumption that all mages have ice block, they'd better make sure all mages have ice block. You might say, well then, change that fight, but we all know it's not that easy. Viscidus never got changed, and he certainly was one of the top five fights that desperately needed adjustment in their time.

The PvP explanation isn't really believable, though. Adding Ice Block to a fire mage isn't going to make them any more competitive in high-level arena than they are now. You still need Water Elemental and Cold Snap.

And if you look at the DPS charts, you'll see that Mages are right up there at the top on DPS. If they were not doing so well, I could see boosts being handed out, but in the case of Ice Block, you have a talent that is being given as a class skill frivalously.

The experience of numerous guilds suggests that this statement simply isn't accurate. Before the broken MSD/TLC/AToI AM build of 2.2, extensive statistical analysis of WWS parses was done (on the official WoW boards, it was true, but it was no less statistically rigorous for that). The only time mages actually do competitive DPS are at the Karazhan to early SSC/TK levels, when they outgear other people via tailoring. At these foundational stages of raiding, you'll see the DPS meters look like a mix of mages and locks, as well as rogues with epic weapons. But by mid tier 5 content the scales begin to shift, and by T6, mages are solidly behind rogues, destruction warlocks, beast mastery hunters, and DPS warriors. The majority of complaints on the official boards are whining, to be sure, but thoughtful, skilled mage players as well as mage and non-mage high-end raid leaders throughout WoW are coming to the same conclusion regarding mage viability.

Briefly, it goes something like this: at the high end, mages don't do enough damage to be taken for DPS, don't survive long enough to be taken for survivability, and don't have enough utility to be taken for utility. It's not that mages are useless; far from, and every high-end guild has a number of mages. The problem is that mages are about 1-2% behind DPS warriors and consequently up to about eight or so percent behind the class which directly competes with them for raid slots, destruction warlocks. Obviously, a gap of 1-8% isn't going to stop any good guild from progressing. On the other hand, in terms of game design, there's clearly a flaw if a class exists for which, in terms of PvE 25-man boss encounters, they are the best at nothing. And I want to make it clear: I'm certainly not saying that mages are awful or that they aren't sufficiently good to be in the raid for any encounter in the game. But it is a design flaw when a class is strictly inferior to another, and, as it happens to be, multiple others.

Trainable Ice Block and Icy Veins are in the direction of potentially addressing this flaw. It's actually a baby step, but Blizzard tends to take baby steps on class balance, and at least it's heading in the right direction, in my view, which is to accept that mages don't functionally have PvE utility (PvP is quite a different matter, of course; Polymorph is fantastic in arena), and to re-emphasize the damage aspects of the class and to provide a little survivability help. Most importantly, making iceblock trainable is a way to improve mage PvE survivability (since the PvE tree is clearly intended to be Fire) without making already-survivable Frost mages more durable in Arenas.

Kalgan made a post a long time ago where he talked about balancing for Arena. He got a lot of flak for it, because he was asked "So you're just balancing Arenas around the very top brackets?" and he responded "Would you rather we balanced classes around people who are not good in Arena?" The questioner took umbrage, because Kalgan implied that the majority of people are not good at Arena. Of course, the majority of people are, in fact, not good at Arena, but my point in bringing up this example is to illustrate how Blizzard frequently has its eye on the high end when it comes to balance. In this case, I can see these mage changes in the context of repairing faults in the mage class that only become visible at the high end.

It's about balance. I'm not really interested in comparing lists of who got the most talents turned into skills. What's important is reaching, as close as possible, a decently balanced state, and Blizzard feels (and I agree) that they'll turn as many talents into skills as is necessary to achieve balance. Arguably, all that turning fewer talents into skills for a class signifies is that the class' talent tree was better designed in the first place, instead of including things that should have been skills. There's certainly more than one perspective on it.

[LochnarITB]

All this crap makes me sad. I get so sick of all the changes to classes - all classes always, not just the current mage change squabble. They should have been set in stone long ago. Learned skills should have been those that didn't rely on specialized knowledge and trees should have each stuck to their themed knowledge instead of blurring the trees where a talent in one tree affects another tree. Encounters and arenas and instances and whatever should then have been designed with those classes in mind. Each class would have their strong points and weak but everyone would have learned what they were and could have planned strategies as such. Instead, we get bickering over how Johnny can do this so I should be able to do that and then, if my class whines enough, we finally get that. Now xyz encounter is borked because that makes it trivial so it gets changed. A battleground gets added and some aspect makes it difficult for a certain build so the class gets adjusted instead of the battleground being adjusted to level the playing field. Etc. etc. The whole thing reminds me of the cliche cartoon where you see the character running across an endless brick bridge with the bricks falling out behind them. The classes should be the solid stone base that the rest of the WoW bridge is built out from.