Brainstorming

Before the silliness, check out Yea We Lift's blog. So far it features entries from their priest, Eks, but will eventually feature articles from the team's other members. Even if you're not on Stormstrike, you've likely heard the name of many of their players as some of them have been big name PvPers since WAY back. And if you haven't, you'll see a few of them hopefully not embarrassing themselves and me in the process at WSVG this weekend. =p Seriously, they're crazy good and have been a dominant part of Stormstrike arena since the beginning of season one.

I know this isn't the sort of article that people want, but I thought it would be interesting to randomly brainstorm potential changes and future abilities before too much expansion news hits and we're all jaded by what we've seen.

Brainstorming Ideas for WLK:

Some are changes to existing mechanics, some are stupid thoughts that I had, and some are just cool things I've heard.

Spellsteal - Spellsteal's base mana cost reduced by 35%. Casting Spellsteal now gives you the Arcane Blast debuff increasing the mana cost of your next Spellsteal and Arcane Blast spell and reducing the cast time of your Arcane Blasts with each stack. (Stacks 3 time) Spellstolen buffs cannot be dispelled. Basically, makes Spellsteal have a dynamic with Arcane Blast and makes it cheaper and more desirable for single dispels, but extremely costly to spam.

Feedback - Randomly removes one beneficial effect from the target and restores 5% of the mage's mana and health. (45 Sec CD) I always thought that the BE priest racial was a really cool idea but underpowered and too situational. I like the idea of sacrificing buffs on a moderate cooldown for a powerful effect. Some class should have something like this, it's a cool mechanic and if you think about it in conjunction with rank 1 buffs and the ability to remove buffs from friendly targets (not yourself), it has some cool potential.

Haste - Increase target's movement, casting, and attack speed by 30% for 12 seconds. Target is afflicted with exhausted after haste ends (if not dispelled, get it?) which reduces the above 3 by 30% for 6 seconds. Again pretty obvious, but the mechanic twist is that you have to choose whether to dispel it or not, as if dispelled, they won't become "exhausted."

Ignite - The damage done through ignite is based on the critical strike damage before resilience is included. So a 2k crit yields 800 ignite damage even if the crit is reduced to 1500 by resilience. This is more of a balance/scaling thing than a change, but I think that these types of effects shouldn't be triple-taxed by resilience.

Molten Armor - The damage dealt by molten armor will now damage ranged and caster targets. This is a ridiculous buff especially when you figure in impact. Weirdly, Blue said in Beta the reason why this wasn't in the game was due to technical and not balance issues. I always thought that this would be cool and make mages way more of a pain to FF despite their squishiness. (literally) I think that people talk about spec viability for other classes a lot (read shamans, rogues, priests) but the topic is generally ignored for mages. I'm not sure fire mages should be a LOT harder to kill but perhaps what keeps them alive in arenas more than survivability could be a mechanic that makes targeting them painful. (beyond the annoyance of chain blazing speed procs)

Frost Snares - All frost snares are on self diminishing returns. After 3 frostbolts, you are immune to the frostbolt snare for 15 seconds, same for CoC. (obviously not Blizzard) This would probably make almost no difference balance wise, but it feels stupid that I can grief people forever with rank 1 fbolt and depending on their class and current cooldown status, they can never escape or fight back.

Minimum Mana Cost on Low Ranks - Rank 1 spells cost at least 50% of their max rank equivalents. This would be a huge nerf, but why are half the spells I cast from level 20 or earlier? Rank 1s should still be better situationally, but not equivocally. (poly, nova) Other classes don't get this luxury to the degree that mages do; it seems like a real oversight.

Master of Elements - Mana restored from criticals going to whole party, amount restored reduced to 10/20%. I really know very little about endgame PvE anymore, but even if frost remains marginalized in raiding, how can you make both fire and arcane attractive, fun to play, and viable? Fire always felt extremely mindless fireball spam to me; perhaps it is time to tweak the gameplay. (this doesn't change gameplay really...)

Spell Haste, Heroism, and Troll Beserking should reduce the global cooldown. Because they do not, many core abilities gain nothing from these effects and this creates weird scaling issues.

New Area of Effect Spell - Blue stressed again the AoE nature of the class during both class panels at Blizzcon. There were no new AE abilities for mages in BC (except DB, which is only sorta AE and shares CD with CoC) while other classes received many. I've always loved the idea that Blizzard would be changed to a 6 second channel that would continue for 4 seconds in the area after the channel. Think summon blizzard on an area instead of stand there channeling it. You'd then get 4 seconds of overlapping AE potential plus some cool possibilities in PvP.

Sear - 4 Second Channel. Deals fire damage each second with each tick doing increasingly more damage. 24 Sec CD. Think Protoss Warp Rays. There aren't any escalating damage channels, why are they all flat damage? This would be cool in PvE and PvP and as long as it was long enough cooldown to be reliably interrupted (and PvE balanced) could be an interesting mechanic. I imagine scorch stacking and trying to outrange that ES to get off the sear.

Cauterize - Deals 500 damage to a friendly unit and removes all bleeds. Healing done to the target is increased by 30% for 8 seconds. Could do more damage based on spell damage or not. The idea is that you can harm a teammate (breaks poly, sap, gouge) which alone is not in the game and you can simultaneously give him a healing buff. (also strangely missing from the game as a player ability at least) The second mechanic is dying to be in the game and could be really one of the missing pieces in extending and making more complex arena matches.

And that's all that I got on top of my head right now. Post up some weird ideas or thoughts preferably with mechanics not yet in game as player abilities but are still the sorts of things that can be reasonably implemented. (As cool as that slow motion Mothership time stop thing would be in WoW)