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Some thoughts on changed needed by mages...
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Post by
Morkai
I was looking at the talent trees and thinking of some changes that could seem to work nicely for mages... I'll post a few:
Keep in mind that not all of the following changes are suggested to be applied, but a few of them could help mages a lot, I think.
Talents:
Arcane:
-Arcane stability: Make that a 3-point talent for 33/66/100% pushback reduction.
-Arcane Subtlety: Give it back the dispel resist of debuffs (Polymorph, slow, ignite, etc). Maybe if it turns out too imba, allow it to work for arcane debuffs(polymorph,slow only and not ignite, winter's chill etc)...
-Arcane Mind: Make it a 3-point talent for 5/10/15% int bonus
-Mind Mastery: Same: 3 points for 5/10/15% sp
-Arcane Concentration: Make it a 3-point talent too, to be in par with Shaman Elemental Focus and druid Omen of clarity.
Fire:
-Burning determination: Increase it's duration to 15 seconds or something. Or change it to become more useable as currently it only helps against zergs where a mage would be dead anyway.
Could alternatively make it affect roots or slow, for a lesser amount of time in addition to the silence/interrupt.. Triggering that could be tricky though as if not triggered by roots it would be useless but if triggered by roots it could refresh the duration... A root-specific cooldown could help.
-Molten shields: With the change in impact molten armour affecting ranged or casters currently sucks. Change it to provide some kind of mitigation against psysical or magical attacks.
-Improved Scorch: Make it apply 5 stacks with 1 cast, unglyphed. Change the glyph to increase it's damage or something. It now affects other spells too, could as well change names.
-Empowered fire: Make it affect scortch too, possibly by 3/6/9% sp.
-Impact: Increase stun duration to 3 seconds
-Burnout: Remove the mana burn component.
-Firestarter: Make the flamestrike affected by this talent cost less mana. 50% or something... Mages take it for pvp for an extra instant, while it sucks for pve, so it will solve some mana issues...
-Playing with fire: This needs some major buffing... Remove the damage taken component and add something that boosts pvp survivability... Rename it to fit the new changes.
-Combustion: It's a useless talent that makes dragon's breath cost 2 points... Make it an AP-style buff or something like elemental shaman's elemental mastery? Or give something brand new.
-Pyroblast: Mages don't cast it, buff it's damage a lot or change it somehow....
-Blazing Speed: Make it 7/15% chance and it should make you immune to snares for 2 seconds when triggered. That should increase it's worth.
Frost:
-Permafrost: Give an equivelent buff to other specs too, not just to chill effects... 20% is not much and barely counters the changes in resilience, and will help other specs like fire and arcane which need some burst be able to kill healers easier... The talent is very good, just using it as an example for others...
-Arctic Winds: Most mages don't get this one past 1-2 points to move lower because the benefit per point is not good enough... Increasing the damage provided and possibly making it work for spells too, would be a nice change... Or could lower the talents requried to 3 points or do both for 2/4/6% damage bonus, melee/ranged/spell avoidance. That would make it more desired for pvp and a little better for pve which is low on damage done anyway.
-Ice Barrier: Make it trainable! That will solve lots of fire and arcane mage problems, will help arcane with Incanter's absorption(Mana shield drains too much mana to make it effective). Replace it with some new spell or new passive talent perhaps.
Glyphs:
-Fireblast: Remove it, it's a waste of mats... Or make it more useful. Could make it interrupt spellcasting, or something... THe change in impact made it completely useless... It's a spell with already high crit chance, and working only after a dragon's breath, is a waste. Keep in mind that DB can break from other sources in group pvp plus you'll need to take enough range for the fireball after DB to be sure that fireblast lands before it and thus benefits from incapacitate.
-Ice Lance: Buff it's pve damage.
-Mage armor: Change it to something useful. It's currently 100% useless unless. Plus it's no longer used in either pvp or pve, so the spell needs a buff too...
Arcane barrage: Either buff the spell and make it usefull or buff the glyph. People with mana issues will pick glyph of mana gem anyway...
More to come soon, g2g
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Post by
EtherealOne
Whoa Whoa Whoa, what was that?
-Ice Barrier: Make it trainable! That will solve lots of fire and arcane mage problems, will help arcane with Incanter's absorption(Mana shield drains too much mana to make it effective). Replace it with some new spell or new passive talent perhaps.
Hold up here kid, It's ok for frost to have it since their burst is only at maximum on a frozen target, but you have to realize if you give Arcane another shield, they'll be indestructible.
It already takes 2-3 fireballs to break, not to mention they get another tool to add spellpower into that with Incanter's Absorption.
Trust me, when a Frost mage puts up both shields, it takes a long time to bring it down, when the mana sheild goes away, the Frost mage casts Ice Barrier again. You burn through that, then you can dps him down.
They trade that in for low burst on non-frozen targets. Personaly, I'm a Fire mage, imagine Fire Ward, Mana Shield, AND Ice Barrier. A mage with about 1500 sp could absorb 7000-8000 damage.
Give that to an Arcane mage, and they can't be killed.
8k damage is approximately one crit or two non-crits. You are not taking into account that the reason that it takes a while to whittle down a Frost mage's barrier is because they have a multitude of other abilities available to them, including ones that directly buff the barrier itself.
On topic:
I agree with the Arcane debloating, apparently that is on Blizzard to-do list as well , albeit low down.
With the fire.
Burning determination, increase its cooldown and make it prevent one silence or interrupt would be far more useful since you are rarely ever going to get locked out quickly within quick succession due to DR anyway.
Molten Armour is supposed to be our offensive armour, if you need defense you take Frost vs Melee or Mage Armour vs Casters. It would be better if we got a change to reflect this. Give it back a low chance to stun or something.
Imp Scorch, I agree it's completely ridiculous that we have to cast a horrible DPS spell to maintain something locks can incorperate into their main nuke. But I would much rather they tweaked it to give a unique and better buff (5% increased Fire damage taken on the target) and leave the crit to the locks.
Emp Fire, I think this is a pretty solid talents as it lies especially now with the mana regen. Maybe leave this one. I don't feel that scorch was ever supposed to be an alternative to Fireball in terms of DPS, just something to quickly finish off a mob/enemy.
Impact/Burnout/Playing with Fire: Totally agree with all this, shooting ourselves in the food to be able to DPS is ridiculous.
Firestarter, again due to the Emp Fire change i'm not sure changing this necessary
Combustion: I'm not even sure this ability is still in the game. Give it something better, even a flat damage/crit increase for a period of time would be fine.
Pyroblast: This spell is fine, you have to take into account the DoT portion of the spell when considering its total damage. Cast it when HS procs or to open with.
The biggest problem with Blazing Speed is that it is far to RNG dependent to be a reliable escape mechanic. There needs to be something so that you do not feel afterwards "If BS had procced I could survive that"
Arctic Winds: I do agree that a 5 point talent this deep is a little steep and that it should do more to justify sinking this many points into it.
Ice Barrier: Totally agree with this. Leave the buffs to IB in Frost and replace it with a talent like;
Winter's Breath: 10 second channel (15 second cooldown), applies a magical effect "Freezing" to the target every 2 seconds, lasting 30 seconds, cannot be dispelled. After reaching 5 stacks the target gains "Brittle" - Increases the damage of the next Frost spell cast against the target by X% (Give it a high coefficient since it's a 10 second channeled set up) but I feel this spell would really help give Frost Mage more burst.
I feel we have enough useful glyphs to not be too troubled.
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Post by
Achloryn
Don't make ice barrier trainable. With incanters absorption and the already quite incredible damage of Arcane, it may get a bit much.
Just give fire its own shield / absorb. Throw it somewhere deep in the tree. I hardly think it would break the PvE game and might just bring fire up to a half decent level in PvP.
Buff frost damage 10-15%.
Before
the resilience change, Blizzard used Mages as an example of a Balanced class. With the resilience change, we probably come off the worst - being a direct damage mana user who more often than not has to sacrifice his PvP gear just to get some haste.
It would go a long way to making Frost viable in raids also.
how about this.. Make it trainable.. cut it's damage absorption in half (or something of that nature).. make the ice barrier talent in frost tree increase the amount absorbed and combine it with shattered barrier.
get rid of mana shield.. it's insane and i've never been a big fan.
i am all in favor of buffing frost damage though.
Post by
StrangerWifCandy
Making Ice Barrier trainable? Mmmm, I'd say no, it's possibly THE defining feature of Frost, especially after Ice Block was made trainable.
Virtual 6k heals every 30 seconds for all mages? Makes me nervous thinking about how they'd make up for that loss in individuality for the Frost tree.
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79146
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Post by
Achloryn
It can't be trainable. That combined with Incanter's would be completely OP.
hadn't considered that. however, since the amount of SP increase is capped at 5% of the mage's health it wouldn't be anything more insane than a proc off of two trinkets at once.
Frost has problems. Mainly damage.
Arcane has problems. Mainly that the tree is bloated.
Fire has problems. Mainly that it does not have sustainable mana costs.
QFT.
also with fire, for all of it's "pvp" style talents, most of them are really quite bad, don't proc enough, or don't simply aren't as helpful as they could be.
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