One of Those Dumb "Make Your Own Tree" Posts

I ended up reading a bunch of these this morning and having already capped out yesterday (level 77 omgnerd), and thus, having nothing better to do, started thinking about THE changes that would make me perfectly content with the WotLK mage.

I'll start with talents, where the problems are, what the fixes could be, and then talk about the big picture stuff.

First of all, check it.

Arcane

Tier 1:

Arcane Subtlety: 10 spell penetration for two points? Retarded. Needs to scale with level. Not too dangerous even if it scales well.

Fix: Increase penetration by .5/1 per level.

Imp. AM: Too many talent points for one facet of one spell.

Fix: Change to 3/3 talent.

Tier 2:

Wand Spec: Useless.

Fix: Replace.

Magic Absorption: Resist scaling is great change. Mana refund mechanic is outdated with new resist mechanics. In line with talent name, change to actually be effective in new resist system.

Fix: Converts resisted damage into mana. Up to 2% for 5 points.

Tier 3:

Arcane Fortitude: Poorly received by players. Weird that a mage in cloth has an "armor" talent. (Even if it isn't that bad)

Fix: Replace. Shift Counterspell into the 11 point slot. This frees up 6 points from arcane either into primary tree for PvP or simply changes up how people spec in shallow Arcane.

Student of the Mind: Fine talent.

Fix: Moved to Tier 2 to replace Wand spec.

Tier 4:

Improved Mana Shield: Still uses a prohibitive amount of mana.

Fix: Improve scaling to 25/50%. Even at 1:1 scaling, it is going to be very costly to use this more than once or twice. Additionally, by making Mana Shield actually usable, you improve synergy with Incanter's Absorption. Goal: Make Mana Shield a "buff" worth dispelling not a "buff" you wish you could debuff your enemies with.

Arcane Meditation: Strong raiding talent but generally useless otherwise. Creates weird raid spec optinality between sustainable Fire/Frost specs and more damage oriented specs.

Fix: Drop down to Tier 5 to make the talent more exclusively an "Arcane" raiding talent. Add secondary effect that refunds mana when the mage drops combat to reduce downtime when soloing and increase longevity in PvP.

Improved Counterspell: The need for the silence on Imp CS has been long debated but nonetheless most players invest 17 points in Arcane, and will continue to, simply for this talent alone.

Fix: Moved to 11 point talent. It feels like a "keystone" talent anyway.

Tier 5:

Improved Blink: You typically are not being struck immediately following a blink by melee, and while the increases chance to resist spell is not bad, 25% is high enough to be annoying RNG and low enough not to be reliable.

Fix: Rework to original data mined version that increases casting speed after Blink. Roll Invisibility fade reduction into this talent. (It feels like it fits)

Arcane Mind: Fine Talent.

Fix: Switched with Arcane Meditation.

Tier 6:

Prismatic Cloak: Good in theorycraft, marginal in practice. If the Frost Mage is going to be strong against melee, why not allow this talent to follow the trend of Arcane to be anti-magic.

Fix: Stacking same school damage reduction 2% per stack. If the enemy changes schools, they reset the stack. Creates potentially a few stacks of buffs on the mage to help frustrate dispel spam. Forces players to play differently against mages perhaps. (Work in an immo or drop form for a chastise)

Tier 7:

Empowered Arcane Missiles: The missiles component is generally fine, but why not work in 2pc T5 bonus. (and nerf 2pc T5 obviously)

Fix: 5/10/15% damage on Arcane Blast to keep the spell somewhat relevant as a potential mana dump at the end of fights where you've got extra mana. (Barrage, triple stacked blast rotation)

Tier 9:

Slow: Useless as there are abundant ways to remove the debuff, the debuff is of questionable utility against many classes, and Slow is extremely mana intensive to put up.

Fix: Keep slow somewhat weak and easy to dispel but change to target area of effect spell and slightly reduce mana cost. Make slow a punish debuff for grouping up in PvP and a panic kite assist in PvE. In PvP, this could have good potential as it would require a lot of globals and a decent amount of mana to remove assuming you hit a few targets. Shortened duration to increase the relative cost of keeping clumps of targets perma slowed.

New Talent - Arcane Fortitude: Increases spirit based on your resilience. A PvP talent designed to give deep Arcane mages signficantly improved sustainability. Some potential abuses in PvE as you're potentially getting a LOT of spirit for two talent points, but it seems like it would also be non optimal to wear gear with resilience in PvE either way. (It is relatively expensive and you're only getting 50% effect)

Incanter's Absorption: Confusing talent in that the best shield mages have, Ice Barrier, cannot be combined with this talent. While Shatter Shield and Mana Shield can have synergy with this, it seems better for it to be higher up the tree.

Fix: Moved to tier 4.



Frost

Tier 1:

Improved Frostbolt: Nothing wrong with this talent. In PvP, mages depend on the relatively slow casting Frostbolt, but have no pushback protection for it. Spell pushback is extremely frustrating and not a fun mechanic. AT ALL.

Fix: Roll some pushback protection into the talent that all Frost Mages take.

Tier 2:

General Problem: Every talent on this Tier is fantastic and a "must" for PvP.

Fix: They are too good to really thin much, but perma becomes a 2/2 talent, and loses the extra one second.

Tier 3:

Improved Blizzard: Extremely obnoxious to need to talent this spell for it to be useful especially in a very, very bloated tree.

Fix: Changed to 1 point, 60% snare.

Tier 5:

Improved Cone of Cold - Not a bad talent, but CoC is so ridiculously expensive, that using a max rank version is situational, even if fully talented.

Fix: Reduce mana cost as well as scale damage to make using max rank easier to justify.

Frozen Core: One of the worst talents in the game.

Fix: Redesign. Reduces physical damage taken and reduces duration of physical debuffs. (Frost is the anti-melee tree after all)

Tier 6:

Ice Floes: I've always hated this talent although it has become much more popular solely for the six seconds off Ice Barrier due to how much damage makes have to tank in PvP now.

Fix: Reduce the duration of ALL cooldowns. Make this a core PvP talent for Frost and a reason for mid tier specs. (x/x/31) This could be too powerful, but I'm not seeing the big danger -- it would help frost survivability a lot. (Blink, CS, nova, etc)

Tier 7:

Arctic Winds: Good talent, but somewhat bloated. It ends up in PvE specs more than PvP specs as PvP specs just don't have the points to spend, which is weird because it is "supposed" to be a PvP talent.

Fix: Reduce to 2/2 with slightly reduced effect. Helps overall tree bloat.

Tier 8:

Winter's Grasp: The most fun, engaging talent that will ever happen to raiding. (Assuming spamming ffb isn't more effective) It has potentially dangerous scaling issues with stacked raids and adds potentially a healthy amount of RNG to PvP.

Fix: Change to a buff on the mage. This removes the PvE scaling issue. Increase the chance to proc to keep potency and reduce the RNG factor for PvP. It being a buff cuts two ways in PvP: you gain a potent tool for target swaps, but it is much, much, more easily dispellable as a buff than as a debuff. (Winter's Chill and the mage is probably being spam dispelled anyways)

Tier 9:

Improved Water Elemental: Confusing because while it increases WE uptime and thus increases damage overall, the extra health won't matter at all at keeping it alive.

Fix: Instead of trying to keep your pets alive for ridiculous lengths of time, shorten the cooldown so it is less a big deal when they die. Scale damage and mana to justify talent investment.

Brain Freeze: Horrific talent that makes no logical sense. Generally frozen targets are out of range of their target if melee, and if caster, they can very likely remove the freeze effect on them.

Fix: Replace. New talent is an anti dispel talent on three specific frost abilities. (No, we shouldn't have poly anti dispel)

Tier 11:

Deep Freeze: As a 1.5 second cast, this talent is just not possible to land. Anyone of reasonable competence will interrupt the cast or break the freeze unless you manage to have proc'd WG. Even then, this is dispellable, and is short duration with shared DR with all other controllable stuns and is on a reasonably long CD.

Fix: Reduce to 0.5 second cast. This makes interruption more challenging. Removing the root must also be done much more quickly.

Fire

Tier 2:

Improved Fire Blast: There is too much bloat and this talent is too marginal for anyone to ever invest in it. Moreover, Fireblast is of marginal use in PvE.

Fix: Increases the critical strike bonus of Fireblast. This rewards the synergy with Combustion and Hot Streak, plus potential synergy with Clearcasting and Shatter. Queuing fireblasts for the "extra" crit becomes more valuable and players who take advantage of this will gain differentiation.

Tier 3:

Improved Flamestrike: Flamestrike is generally not a very desirable AoE.

Fix: Increases the damage done by all AoE spells. (You will still hit caps so this talent may for many still be useless, but has at least some weird PvP potential)

Pyroblast: So why is this six seconds? Oh, because it's useless and bad.

Fix: Change to 1.5 second cast. Add a medium length cooldown. Increase mana cost substantially. This adds diversity to casting rotation for Barrage and Deep Fire specs, reduces a Fire mage's "need" for PoM, and opens up elemental mage specs to having decent potential burst. (I really envision this as a mindblast with a dot on a much longer cooldown)

Tier 4:

Molten Shields: Not a horrible talent, but the whole ranged Molten Armor thing should probably be default. (It was supposed to be)

Fix: Moved to Tier 1 to move Frost's Armor talent placement. Changed to increase effects of Molten Armor. (Adds just under 1 crit and 2.5 anti crit) Doesn't address that Frostfire Bolt specs still have to waste T1 fire talents -- but it's something.

New Talent - Fuel for the Fire: A raid debuff for a fire mage. 2% all damage. Will "force" every raid to bring at least one mage. =p

Tier 5:

Playing with Fire - A talent that has always pissed people off. Why should a tier 5 talent of marginal potency even have a drawback?

Fixed: Doubled the effects. It might as well be noticeable. =p This also brings Deep Fire more in line with Barrage specs. (Although still well below Frostfire Bolt)

Tier 7:

Molten Fury: Nothing wrong with this talent. It is a bit marginalized in PvP as any target below 20% that you strike with a Fire spell would have likely died anyways.

Fix: Changed to 15 on 35 as opposed to 20 on 20. This adds 1.25% to deep Fire PvE (and again ffb) which I think is fine and should in conjunction with increased PWF put Deep Fire in line with Arcane/Fire. (But still below Barrage...I think) In PvP, this would obviously be pretty helpful, and well, fire needs it.

Tier 8:

Fiery Payback: So first you need to get hit by a direct damage spell, which rarely happens, and when it does, you probably die. Oh but wait you resisted it. No wonder you didn't die. I bet those resists happen a lot. What's that? Never. Never ever? The 1% has been removed even? Well, shit.

Fix: Try again. Reflects 10% of all critical damage back onto your attacker. (It's a bad Eye for an Eye)

Tier 9:

Dragon's Bad: I mean Breath. It's bad.

Fix: Changed from 3 seconds to 4 to help a little. It's a fun spell that should help setup damage. With one extra second, it might. Probably not.

World in Flames: Nobody likes AoE talents. Nobody really even likes to AoE. Combine that with a talent that doesn't even let you do more damage than you would without it due to the caps unless you're hitting 3-4 targets. BAD.

Fix: If Fire AoE is supposed to be the "burst" AoE of the game, then tailor this talent accordingly. Mages gets an overall damage buff after striking multiple targets with a Fire spell. This lets him burst down the adds or whatever and have a few seconds of extra damage single target or let's him do some good PvP damage if he managed to Dragon's Bad more than one person. (miraculous I know)

Tier 10:

Burnout: Extremely lackluster for its depth in the tree. AND it has a downside.

Fix: Um burn their mana instead of yours? This could be pretty cool for deep fire PvP. Brings back the incentive to toss out (high crit %) scorches and fireblasts. In PvE, this could be quite good depending on encounter design. It's pretty impossible to know. Many bosses would have to be made immune to the effect or have the mana burn be irrelevant. (Which doesn't seem a problem)

Tier 11:

Living Bomb: Terrible. Terrible. Bad. Fire doesn't need another pbaoe.

Fix: Make it not point blank. Simply change it to be castable on enemies and make sure the damage it is doing doesn't break crowd control.



Obviously, some of this stuff is a bit "too much." Generally, Arcane needs tweaking and better identify still. Fire needs better damage and PvP utility. Frost needs less bloat and a better 51. All of the deep new talents need to be looked at, as do many of the relic terrible talents. Frostfire Bolt is a real problem in PvE even after the double dipping issues are fixed if things don't change. WG is not "the" problem but can be reworked to still be fun if stacking mages is the fear.

I basically built this tree out of a few I looked at this morning, an older tree I was working on, and commentary on the EJ boards from today. So if I bit your talent, don't hate and I'm sorry I have no idea where I stole your shit from. =p