Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Skill Lance?

In Beta, I made a long thread about how Ice Lance would never be useful as mages geared up because the low coefficient made the spell scale too poorly. This was right after the damage coefficient was reduced from 43% to 21% and it seemed to me at the time that the spell would just scale well with gear. I'm a BAD beta tester.

Quite the opposite has happened. While it does at best half the damage of a scorch, the issues is not so much the damage, but the fact that the spell is basically "free" to cast. When kiting with scorch, you have to give up some distance in your kite for the 1.5 second cast. You also expose your fire tree, which if you're fire, is a very tangible cost. The fact that it is strangely more mana efficient than Fireblast is also quite odd. I picture what mage gameplay would have been like with a 43% Ice Lance, and it quite possibly would have been just spamming Skill Lance.

Ice Lance rolls into one a lot of elements of the class. Ice Lance enables us to do damage while moving, when previously we needed to stop to scorch, you can simply run FOREVER spamming Ice Lance. Back in the day to keep players in combat, we often used Counterspell, and not only because of its being off the global cooldown, but Fireblast was not necessarily enough given its 8 second cooldown, Ice Lance makes this a non-issue. It's also a low cost, reasonably mana efficient way of doing damage while our other instants are quite the opposite. It has potentially a powerful debuff that increases damage and frustrates dispelling. It's also a good casting pushback, not quite as strong as missiles, but way more practical to use -- you can often ice lance to delay that poly cast enough to get out of range of the cast because of its long range and the travel time of the lance giving you time to get a few steps after the 1 second pushback.

Why am I writing a love letter to Ice Lance? I'm not. I really had a narrow-minded perspective of the spell when I first played with it nearly a year ago; I thought it was just a damage tool to be used in conjunction with shatter, but I honestly find the damage it provides an afterthought to its other uses, especially when playing non-frost specs who still use Ice Lance heavily. It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan that caster gameplay has shifted entirely away from casting to instant cast spam. While one can certainly argue that Arcane Explosion, Blastwave, Cone of Cold and Fireblast have long been PvP stables for mages and are all instants as well, they are limited by high mana costs and extremely limited range.

My misunderstanding in Beta was also one of greatly overestimating how much gear would scale. I imagined a PvP landscape of players with 1500 damage and similar health to what we see in Season 2, which is way the fuck off. Perhaps the assumptions were idiotic, but when you think of how level 60 blues scaled into their level 60 epic equivalents, it isn't that stupid.

On the balance topic, I believe that WoW does not sufficiently reward risk taking. Fake casting was one of the major factors that separated the weak PvPers from the strong in 1.0, but who needs to fake cast when you can use instants exclusively. The cost of going from casting to using instants for lots of classes is not that high. This logic applies in lots of ways and I'm not really talking exclusively about casting, but I feel slightly that although the goal of the expanded health pools in BC was to reduce one-shotting and thus increase the skill and responsiveness of player versus player combat, most strategies have devolved into various types of rushdowns.

41 comments:

Anonymous said...

first! i <3 ice lance

Eks said...

Instants balance counterspell.

I'm sure if you talk to your pallies, they'll let you know how much they love mages. If you want to make everything have a cast time, you better decrease the length of CS.

Oppo said...

"If you want to make everything have a cast time, you better decrease the length of CS"

It's been done.

I'm waiting for the cast times, now.

Eks said...

K go check your mail, I'll be sure to include a nice surprise too.

Oppo said...

kiddy porn? I love the ladies, specially when they are "lean and green with no hair in between"

Raddy said...

Ehh. I'm with oppo on this one. CS duration against paladins has been halfed already, that's pretty generous. Paladins I think are the most atrociously designed class in this game, so I'm not really sure that saying they get devastated by counterspell is so much the issue. And our pallies don't complain about mages, warlocks broseph warlocks. ^^

I think you're talking about CS as just a healing deny, which it basically is in arena, but as a means of damage mitigation, it is significantly more ineffective than it once was. (granted which might have been too good, but the fact remains that a counterspelled FG lock still does more DPS than a nuking fire mage)

Anonymous said...

So basically you want our dots nerfed but mages get to keep all their powerful instants? Our only direct damage instant costs a shard and has three times the cooldown of your main direct instant.

Anonymous said...

Does it matter when you can put up a siphon life and start going to town on someone's mana pool?

Raddy said...

Oh, I'll add that counterspell is certainly not the only casting interrupt, though it is the best.

Only priests and paladins are totally lacking in spell interrupts.

gablo said...

"Only priests and paladins are totally lacking in spell interrupts."

are you counting cyclone? if you're counting cyclone then you should count hoj and fear bomb because, while not necessarily the best tool for the job, the certainly get the job done. if you're not counting cyclone then druids are SOL too, right? except bears are retarded

huck said...

druids have feral charge, which is an interupt with a small lock out.

Do hunters have one though?

Raddy said...

Oh yeah, hunters are a class. True that. LOL.

Hunters don't have a real interrupt, but do have lots of other anti-casting tools

Artanias said...

i cry myself to sleep when i got beaten by a noob smashing his face onto the ice lance hotkey while me casting a spell is WAY less effective and ends to me losing a match, it really aint fun at all and i feel like the extreme skill lvl that once was in mage v mage fights are completely gone.

Anonymous said...

l2adapt?
when icelance is more effective than scorch... and if yous till continue to scorch vs a mage... you deserve to lose

klassick said...

Prayer of Mending with no cooldown was balanced LOL.

Kzn said...

Well, you need to fake cast in arena.

eks said...

I'm not really talking about 1v1s and I'm looking at this from a priest's PoV. Everyone knows warlocks are broken, why beat it into the ground?

The only thing priests have going for them in terms of healing is the fact they can heal pretty well on the run.

Our efficiency is quite possibly the worst, our HPS is also the worst. The way we avoid CC is by using our instants and dodging casts. Shaman have grounding, earthshock and tremor, pallies have bubble and druids can shift out of poly/snares and can also heal pretty well on the run. Priests have... SWD and fearward.

I'm not saying priests are awful by any means, I think they're great. The problem is with no healing instants, there would really would be no reason to bring a holy priest to any arena team if you removed our instant casts.

Another point I'd like to bring up. Why the fuck is counterspell not on GCD? Silence, kick, silencing shot, pummel, feral charge, earth shock, along with EVERY other interrupt are. Not to mention that they're all harder to use to use. Aka you need to be at least facing your target.

eks said...

Made some typos, its early in the morning, sue me!

Anonymous said...

felhunter silence...even usable while the lock is silenced. NOW THATS OP!

Nate said...

I think you hit the nail on the head with this post Raddy. Ice lance is easily one of the most (if not THE most) versitile spell in a mage's repetoire. And when the best tool on your belt is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.

I think ice lance needs a short cooldown. Something along the lines of 6-8 seconds should be fine. It's instant cast time, range, low mana cost, damage efficiency, and burst damage output against a frozen target still make it an excellent spell. However, it would force the mage to actually think about when he is going to use his ice lance, and what spell he is going to cast next, as opposed to mindlessly spamming ice lance over and over.

Anonymous said...

Any good pvp / blog sites besides this one. Gameriot won't come up at work and pvpscene.com won't either. Love the blog raddy but can't justify trolling it all day. Thanks

kellykpowski said...

hmmm. priest silence and warlocks spell lock also do not need to be facing the target.

maybe its because if you want to kick someone in the face to make them stfu you have to fucking be looking at them.

Anonymous said...

I can't beleive that someone asked why CS isn't on the global cooldown. BECAUES IT FUCKING BREAKS ITS FUNCTIONALITY. THAT'S WHY THEY REVERTED IT AFTER TWO MONTHS OF MAGES KILLING THEMSELVES IN FRUSTRATION.

Anonymous said...

As much as you complain about locks, how can you not see just how OP mages are in PvP. Not only do you have variable specs you can go with to be viable depending on the matrix, you have the most escapes and CC of any class in the game combined with an instant that can wear down nearly every class from a distance. When we dueld on beta and you complained about Ice Lance I said you were nuts and that it was easily the best addition to any class in the game.
You wanted it to hit as hard as a casted spell! Don't forget that it also instantly eats up the only defense a warrior has against a kiting mage - something that is limited by stance/weapon swapping, rage and global cooldowns and it loses the 21% during the reflect doing almost little damage in return. I could actually see Ice Lance getting some sort of cooldown put on it down the line. Most other instants in the game are penalized by a 5+ second cooldown, why should ice lance be any different?

Mages are the best designed class in the game and seem to have the most options vs all classes except maybe one or two specs.

Anonymous said...

Do you feel that other CS like spells should be off global as well? Kick, Pummel, Bash, feral charge, silence shot, etc? Why not if you say so.

Anonymous said...

all off-gcd counterspell does is enable mages to spam their myriad of instants and still interrupt 1.5 casts with ease.

the fact that other classes "still do damage while waiting for their interrupt" is irrelevant. Being able to nail an offgcd interrupt is far more devastating than one 3.8 2h swing, 1 dot tick or some other white damage.

and icelance needs a cooldown, just like lock drains do.

kellykpowski said...

laugh at the warrior crying about not being viable. mages have a ton of viable specs? um what 14/0/47 and deep frost?

sorry but warrior ezmode too. i could see them adding a cooldown to hamstring since most instants have a 5+ second cooldown

kellyk said...

ment to do 17/0/44 there

Anonymous said...

Feral Charge is not on the GCD. Why? Because it's necessary for it to be off the GCD for druids to use it as an interrupt.

Anonymous said...

Never said warriors were not easy mode. Swing sword and win.

Vontre said...

No, melee also interrupts casting with melee damage, aka pushback. Also they're melee.

It's different classes, get over it. Standarization is a bullshit excuse of an argument, if you want all the ducks in a row then let's apply that to crowd control and make polymorph not heal or break on damage. Like fear. Sound good? No, it's fucking stupid, they're different classes with different advantages/disadvantages.

Raddy, you're way overstating the usefulness of ice lance. It's not good mana efficiency by any means against unfrozen targets, the damage from spam ice lance is healed easily outhealed by a HoT. It has marginal utility for keeping people in combat and getting maybe one pushback against another caster, which is overall a loss in time advantage anyway since you've traded 1 second off their spell for 1.5 seconds on your global cooldown.

Our best spells are still cast-time and that goes for a lot of classes as well. POLYMORPH has a cast time. Any nuke that actually does reasonable sustained damage has a cast time (usually a long one). Direct heals, mind blast, unstable affliction, drain life, fear, manaburn. Most of the powerful spells still have cast times, there's plenty to interrupt during a pvp match.

Anonymous said...

"the fact that other classes "still do damage while waiting for their interrupt" is irrelevant. Being able to nail an offgcd interrupt is far more devastating than one 3.8 2h swing, 1 dot tick or some other white damage."

No it's not irrelevant at all. Mages have mana and cannot heal. Because of this we have a time limit on how long we can go before we become completely uselss. When CS was off the GCD it was absolutely TRIVIAL for a decent healer to run a mage OOM.

Why? Because the way you force a healer to heal is to do damage to them. In order to damage you must activate the GCD. The GCD is 1.5 seconds. Flash Heal is 1.5 seconds. With CS on the GCD all you had to do was wait for a mage to cast any spell and then cast a 1.5 heal. GET IT?

I still remember being able to identify mages who understood wtf they were doing because when meeting on a battlefield both of ust would just wait for the other to cast a spell because whoever cast first would get sheeped. The mage staredown ftw. Good times. Not.

Anonymous said...

Interrupts off the CGD:

Spellock
Feral Charge
Counterspell

Anonymous said...

"Why? Because the way you force a healer to heal is to do damage to them. In order to damage you must activate the GCD. The GCD is 1.5 seconds. Flash Heal is 1.5 seconds. With CS on the GCD all you had to do was wait for a mage to cast any spell and then cast a 1.5 heal. GET IT?"

fake cast something?...
oh no cant spam instants, oh woe.

even if you are right to a degree 1v1, the moment you add more people to the equation, super-cs becomes much more powerful as the effect of not landing a heal is much more noticeable. People die in the span of a CS all the time (even one reduced by auras/items)

Alec said...

First of all, Raddy when is Game Over queueing again? Second of all, Gablo you can't put cyclone in the same category as HOJ, thinking you can is crazy. Mages will control paladins a lot better too once this next patch hits and sac is on a sixty second cooldown.

Anonymous said...

now imagine casting multiple icelances on multiple targets all at the same time!

loldots! lolwarlocks!

Raddy said...

@Alec - I believe on Monday next week. I've been unable to play basically for 2 weeks, so blame me. ^^

As for my comments on Ice Lance in beta, they were VERY wrong. LOL.

Your suggestion that mages have "Many" viable PvP specs is ludicrous -- I don't have the #s anymore, but mages were far and away the most homogenous class on top 20, 50, and 100 arena teams across whatever bracket you observed earlier in the season -- I doubt that has changed.

And honestly, I'm not sure mages have WAY more CC now than other classes. Rogues, druids, and locks also have very strong crowd control, just different.


@Vontre:

The mana efficiency point was relative to our other instants.

I don't really agree that most of the powerful abilities have casting times, you name a few that you do, but I could as easily name some that don't.

As for the pushback vs global cooldown trade, I mean if you do push back that scorch to 2.5 seconds instead of 1.5, the DPS advantage of scorch is basically zero. Of course most classes have huge amounts of pushback resistance in BC, so it is not a HUGE issue.

As for other spell interrupts being off the global cooldown, I'm all for it (not earthshock or earthshock needs to do 1/3 its current damage or something), I've said before that I think this game would be way better with more stuff off the global cooldown. Getting screwed by global cooldowns isn't that much fun. ^^

Putting Ice Lance on a cooldown would be a pretty large nerf as there isn't exactly something else you could use in a lot of sitations. (the point of this post)

Anonymous said...

Rad are you a lawyer?

Raddy said...

Negative, not a lawyer. Don't my poor writing skills give that away extremely quickly? LOL.

"I ilke think that dude's guilty. He's like all dark n' stuff, they do crimes." I'm not so much with the lawyer speak.

entrails said...

Some of my pre BC speculative PvP-forum trolling posts were predicting the fact that 1 on 1 fights would be less about finesse and control and more about putting out damage after they increased HP/survivability. Just saying, I called that shit.

Man, thinking back about it now I called so much shit including HP scaling issues and flying mount>world pvp. God, I'm fucking insightful and awsome.

Alec said...

Pretty sure mages were less homogeneous than paladins and warriors.