08-09-2004, 11:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-09-2004, 11:42 PM by MongoJerry.)
Quote:I wouldn't count on it. Mages will still rule the PvP roost due to the insane burst damage they can produce on a single enemy. Who cares about drinking in combat if the enemy's dead? :) Likely there are more nerfs to Mages in the works than this.
The only reason mages are great in PvP is invisibility. If the person is patient enough to wait for me to engage an enemy and then pyroblast me from behind, there's nothing I can do. But in a straight-up fight, I kill the mage 60% of the time, the mage is forced to run 30% of the time, and I die about 10% of the time. Give me some kind of Detect Greater Invisibility ability, and I'll go out and slaughter every mage on the PvP server. (And I would, too!)
Quote:However, if Priests are not given something via Talents, their usefulness in PvE will be hurt even more. Already I can see with my level 45 Priest why they're unpopular - they just aren't very hot at soloing, requiring a lot of downtime unless you get a mage friend to make you some mana every time you log on.
Wierd. I don't have any trouble soloing. I mix in Pain and a mind blast or two with a lot of melee fighting, a style that is fairly mana efficient. The battles may be a little slower, but there's very little downtime. I certainly am never in any danger unless I pull too many elite mobs or something.
Quote:So, this makes me curious. I can definitely see the huge impact this is going to have on Priests. But how do you think this is going to affect most mages? How do you see their fight styles/patterns changing?
Well, for one thing, the stereotypical mage wears all-int gear, figuring if they ever need mana, they can sheep their opponent and take a drink. Or, if the target is immune to sheep, then they can frost nova the enemy/enemies and take a quick sip. This change will certainly make it harder on mages to solo elites and particularly hard bosses that can take more than one mana ball's worth of damage. Mages will have to look to other ways of getting a recharge during a battle -- wearing +spirit gear, stocking up on tons of mana potions (which could be expensive or time consuming to do), or rearrange talents to get more mana regeneration (which would hinder the all-damage skills crowd).
There are lots of ways that this will affect the typical mage, although perhaps Roane your play-style isn't the same as most mages. Most mages I've seen in action -- both solo and in groups -- drink liberally during battles even for just a few quick sips. After all, water is free for mages, so they can afford to drink only for a short spurts at a time. I think priests will be just fine, because most priests are used to not always having a large supply of mage-created water and are therefore used to being more mana efficient in their play. Like I said, I only see this being a problem against big nasty instance bosses, and hopefully priest talents will have ways of dealing with those situations.