Saturday, August 2, 2008
Suggestions: Iteration Two
Arcane:
Spell Impact - Leave as Damage increase instead of Critical Strike chance increase. Two of the six spells get marginal improvement through additional crit. Consider adding Barrage to this talent.
Arcane Shielding - Mana Shield need revision; it's hard to really discuss this talent, but the secondary component does not scale particularly well. (the +20 resists)
Improved Blink - Consider changing to a flat reduction in damage instead of chance to miss. Trim unnecessary RNG where you can or you create superfluous randomness in PvP. This talent in general isn't optimal and could stand to be improved further.
Magic Attunement - Add Blink as a spell to benefit from this talent.
Arcane Potency - Clumsy and generally odd talent. Players tend to dislike the "one shot" aspect of PoM Pyro specs, but more than that, the current incarnation has odd mechanics where you can simply leave PoM up and cast only instants and channeled spells. I'm not sold on this talent not being a subtalent to Clearcasting -- I think Clearcasting just needs to cost less points.
Mind Mastery - 15% for 5 talents is too little. If this talent's effect is going to be reduced, convert to a 3/3 and at least let the 2 other talent points provide some additional utility.
Slow - Talent still needs significant improvement to be worthy of being a 41 point talent. Consider making a targettable AoE, improve in some other way, or replace. Deep Arcane looks primarily to be a raiding talent tree -- most of the PvP specs terminate 28 points or 33 points deep in the tree and if Arcane is to become a more viable PvP tree, it's going to take improvements to this talent and some additional survivability deep in the Arcane tree.
Incanter's Absorption - I'm at a loss on this talent. It's generally unusuable with Mana Shield due to the huge mana cost of Mana Shield, but with Shatter Shield gone and the inability to couple this with Ice Barrier, this talent just isn't likely to be fueled by absorption effects. Granted, we do have Wards, but these are of only mild utility in both PvP and PvE. Even in a raid environment where we are taking a predictable source of Fire or Frost damage, the damage return for spending a GCD on a Ward in conjunction with this talent is generally not worth it. (Unless we would have used the Ward anyway) I think at 20% for two points with some significant improvements to Mana Shield this might have legs, but right now, it's a hard talent to sell to players.
Missiles Barrage - Is there a reason why both Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage cannot proc this? It would simply things a bit...
Barrage Coefficient - Unsure what to think. I would say to consider a weak secondary effect if you want to bring this talent out more in PvP. (Deals additional damage to targets with Mana Bars, anti haste, ignores immunities, etc) However, I like the purity of this talent as just a damage tool -- If Arcane Blast debuff became 4 seconds instead of 5, this would indirectly perhaps solve the PvE side of the problem with this spell.
Frost
Tier 1 Frost - The new Ice Floes is appreciated and helps Elementalist specs feel like they're dumping fewer points into pointless talents. Read next though...
Improved Frost Ward - This talent, while it continues to be moderately improved, is only taken in very Deep Frost PvP specs despite being a Tier 1 talent. Even 44 Frost PvP specs will not take this talent as there are simply other talents more necessary. This should thus be moved further down the tree and a new talent can quite safely occupy its position. (Put this on Tier 4)
Improved Blizzard - I still feel this should be 1 point for 60% reduction. This talent would be a great asset in more specs, but normally, there are simply not the points to spend on it.
Cold as Ice - This should be rolled into Ice Floes and Ice Floes can simply read -20% off all Frost Cooldowns. It's kind of ridiculous to spend 5 talent points on all of this and doesn't feel like a "fun" or efficient way to spend talent points. (Especially because you hardly feel the effect of talents like this unless you're min/maxing in PvE)
Shattered Barriers - Hard to know without testing, but this must not break CC, and should not be on Frost Nova DR.
Fingers of Frost - This is a REALLY disappointing change. Winter's Grasp was an awesome mechanic. Consider bring it back in some form. WG really made the class feel much more fun to play as you reacted to WG procs and used a greater variety of spells. Consider old WG at 4 seconds duration?
Improved Water Elemental - This doesn't really feel like it fits the class very well. Mages have no healing abilities, and all of a sudden we get this strange raid heal that depends on our very fragile pet? This is perhaps a fine talent if the WE gets some increased survivability, but as it stands, it's just weird and sort of bad.
Frozen Core - Still terrible and needs to go. Pushback prevention please! Icy Veins is not enough and even with dispel resistance in Arcane Tier 1, can be pretty easily removed. Frost Mages NEED anti-pushback.
Brain Freeze - Allow FrostfireBolt in addition (or instead of) Fireball. Change the name! (It makes no sense with what it does) FFb also has some nice synergy with Chilled to the Bone that Fireball totally lacks. (And would allow the two talents to work at least sort of with each other)
Fire
I don't know where to begin with this tree. =p
Incineration - Why these four spells? I'm just not seeing the connection. And why is it called Incineration? This is pretty much a PvP talent even though Elementalist PvE specs will take this and enjoy the modest benefit to Scorch.
Burning Determination - I don't like this talent. If you're trying to cast a Polymoprh and are interrupted, you can't cast it again for a few seconds anyways, and when you can, your opponents probably won't have an interrupt for it. (Barring Shamans) Moreover, most classes have a secondary non-interrupt way of interrupting spell casting. (Gouge, Kidney, Spell Reflect, Bash, Scatter Shot, it goes on) I'm not really sure how you improve this talent and keep it in the same vein as the current iteration.
Impact - Trim to few points.
Pyroblast - This is an important 11 point talent that has failed to be meaningful since release. This talent has depended on 21 points in Arcane forever and while there have been some attempts to make it more useful with strange (and bad) Deep Fire talents, the spell remains a novelty. The solution for this spell is simple: Short Cast time. Medium Cooldown. Think Mind Blast. Ditch the gimmick talents and archaic ridiculous cast time.
Blastwave - Keep the small knockback. It doesn't particularly complicate AoEing.
Playing with Fire - 2/4/6% or bust.
Blazing Speed - A lot of people want a 2s immunity to new roots/snares on this. I'm not sure I really care. I'd like to see this become 20% chance for 2/2 for 4 seconds. (Reduce the impact of RNG)
Combustion - I've always felt this was far and away the weakest of our 31 point talents. It is extremely clunky in PvP (and easily dispelled once you get it going) and while this was more like a 2.5-3% DPS improvement in PvE back in Vanilla WoW, it is approaching sub 2% now. Consider some marginal improvement. (All fire spells cost no mana while active perhaps)
Fiery Payback - This is just dumb. A fire mage below 35% is a soon to be dead fire mage. If you want to add some marginal survivability to fire, this has to be more Cheat Death-ish. Something like: When below 35% health, all damage taken is reduced by 50% and increases your chance to resist dispel effects by 60% for 6 seconds. (1 min CD) Change the name obviously. Basically a fire mage would wait for this to proc, get a safe IB (with dispel resistance), and instead of trying to live out hypothermia to his second IB, he'd be trying to live till this 1min CD reset. Or something.
Firestarted - Make it any fire spell not just Flamestrike.
Burnout - Needs improvement. Maybe tweak it to take advantage of or increase the damage of Ignite.
Living Bomb - Nobody wants a 51 point talent that's used for gimmick PvE encounters and for clearing trash.
This is just a copy of my latest whining which can be found on the Beta forums.
Spell Impact - Leave as Damage increase instead of Critical Strike chance increase. Two of the six spells get marginal improvement through additional crit. Consider adding Barrage to this talent.
Arcane Shielding - Mana Shield need revision; it's hard to really discuss this talent, but the secondary component does not scale particularly well. (the +20 resists)
Improved Blink - Consider changing to a flat reduction in damage instead of chance to miss. Trim unnecessary RNG where you can or you create superfluous randomness in PvP. This talent in general isn't optimal and could stand to be improved further.
Magic Attunement - Add Blink as a spell to benefit from this talent.
Arcane Potency - Clumsy and generally odd talent. Players tend to dislike the "one shot" aspect of PoM Pyro specs, but more than that, the current incarnation has odd mechanics where you can simply leave PoM up and cast only instants and channeled spells. I'm not sold on this talent not being a subtalent to Clearcasting -- I think Clearcasting just needs to cost less points.
Mind Mastery - 15% for 5 talents is too little. If this talent's effect is going to be reduced, convert to a 3/3 and at least let the 2 other talent points provide some additional utility.
Slow - Talent still needs significant improvement to be worthy of being a 41 point talent. Consider making a targettable AoE, improve in some other way, or replace. Deep Arcane looks primarily to be a raiding talent tree -- most of the PvP specs terminate 28 points or 33 points deep in the tree and if Arcane is to become a more viable PvP tree, it's going to take improvements to this talent and some additional survivability deep in the Arcane tree.
Incanter's Absorption - I'm at a loss on this talent. It's generally unusuable with Mana Shield due to the huge mana cost of Mana Shield, but with Shatter Shield gone and the inability to couple this with Ice Barrier, this talent just isn't likely to be fueled by absorption effects. Granted, we do have Wards, but these are of only mild utility in both PvP and PvE. Even in a raid environment where we are taking a predictable source of Fire or Frost damage, the damage return for spending a GCD on a Ward in conjunction with this talent is generally not worth it. (Unless we would have used the Ward anyway) I think at 20% for two points with some significant improvements to Mana Shield this might have legs, but right now, it's a hard talent to sell to players.
Missiles Barrage - Is there a reason why both Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage cannot proc this? It would simply things a bit...
Barrage Coefficient - Unsure what to think. I would say to consider a weak secondary effect if you want to bring this talent out more in PvP. (Deals additional damage to targets with Mana Bars, anti haste, ignores immunities, etc) However, I like the purity of this talent as just a damage tool -- If Arcane Blast debuff became 4 seconds instead of 5, this would indirectly perhaps solve the PvE side of the problem with this spell.
Frost
Tier 1 Frost - The new Ice Floes is appreciated and helps Elementalist specs feel like they're dumping fewer points into pointless talents. Read next though...
Improved Frost Ward - This talent, while it continues to be moderately improved, is only taken in very Deep Frost PvP specs despite being a Tier 1 talent. Even 44 Frost PvP specs will not take this talent as there are simply other talents more necessary. This should thus be moved further down the tree and a new talent can quite safely occupy its position. (Put this on Tier 4)
Improved Blizzard - I still feel this should be 1 point for 60% reduction. This talent would be a great asset in more specs, but normally, there are simply not the points to spend on it.
Cold as Ice - This should be rolled into Ice Floes and Ice Floes can simply read -20% off all Frost Cooldowns. It's kind of ridiculous to spend 5 talent points on all of this and doesn't feel like a "fun" or efficient way to spend talent points. (Especially because you hardly feel the effect of talents like this unless you're min/maxing in PvE)
Shattered Barriers - Hard to know without testing, but this must not break CC, and should not be on Frost Nova DR.
Fingers of Frost - This is a REALLY disappointing change. Winter's Grasp was an awesome mechanic. Consider bring it back in some form. WG really made the class feel much more fun to play as you reacted to WG procs and used a greater variety of spells. Consider old WG at 4 seconds duration?
Improved Water Elemental - This doesn't really feel like it fits the class very well. Mages have no healing abilities, and all of a sudden we get this strange raid heal that depends on our very fragile pet? This is perhaps a fine talent if the WE gets some increased survivability, but as it stands, it's just weird and sort of bad.
Frozen Core - Still terrible and needs to go. Pushback prevention please! Icy Veins is not enough and even with dispel resistance in Arcane Tier 1, can be pretty easily removed. Frost Mages NEED anti-pushback.
Brain Freeze - Allow FrostfireBolt in addition (or instead of) Fireball. Change the name! (It makes no sense with what it does) FFb also has some nice synergy with Chilled to the Bone that Fireball totally lacks. (And would allow the two talents to work at least sort of with each other)
Fire
I don't know where to begin with this tree. =p
Incineration - Why these four spells? I'm just not seeing the connection. And why is it called Incineration? This is pretty much a PvP talent even though Elementalist PvE specs will take this and enjoy the modest benefit to Scorch.
Burning Determination - I don't like this talent. If you're trying to cast a Polymoprh and are interrupted, you can't cast it again for a few seconds anyways, and when you can, your opponents probably won't have an interrupt for it. (Barring Shamans) Moreover, most classes have a secondary non-interrupt way of interrupting spell casting. (Gouge, Kidney, Spell Reflect, Bash, Scatter Shot, it goes on) I'm not really sure how you improve this talent and keep it in the same vein as the current iteration.
Impact - Trim to few points.
Pyroblast - This is an important 11 point talent that has failed to be meaningful since release. This talent has depended on 21 points in Arcane forever and while there have been some attempts to make it more useful with strange (and bad) Deep Fire talents, the spell remains a novelty. The solution for this spell is simple: Short Cast time. Medium Cooldown. Think Mind Blast. Ditch the gimmick talents and archaic ridiculous cast time.
Blastwave - Keep the small knockback. It doesn't particularly complicate AoEing.
Playing with Fire - 2/4/6% or bust.
Blazing Speed - A lot of people want a 2s immunity to new roots/snares on this. I'm not sure I really care. I'd like to see this become 20% chance for 2/2 for 4 seconds. (Reduce the impact of RNG)
Combustion - I've always felt this was far and away the weakest of our 31 point talents. It is extremely clunky in PvP (and easily dispelled once you get it going) and while this was more like a 2.5-3% DPS improvement in PvE back in Vanilla WoW, it is approaching sub 2% now. Consider some marginal improvement. (All fire spells cost no mana while active perhaps)
Fiery Payback - This is just dumb. A fire mage below 35% is a soon to be dead fire mage. If you want to add some marginal survivability to fire, this has to be more Cheat Death-ish. Something like: When below 35% health, all damage taken is reduced by 50% and increases your chance to resist dispel effects by 60% for 6 seconds. (1 min CD) Change the name obviously. Basically a fire mage would wait for this to proc, get a safe IB (with dispel resistance), and instead of trying to live out hypothermia to his second IB, he'd be trying to live till this 1min CD reset. Or something.
Firestarted - Make it any fire spell not just Flamestrike.
Burnout - Needs improvement. Maybe tweak it to take advantage of or increase the damage of Ignite.
Living Bomb - Nobody wants a 51 point talent that's used for gimmick PvE encounters and for clearing trash.
This is just a copy of my latest whining which can be found on the Beta forums.
Instant Invis + 2/3 BF
Leaning towards this currently as a general PvP spec.
You can obviously swap some stuff around if you find Imp AM necessary or you want a different mix of Frost talents. (drop perma and 1/3 blizz, go down to 2/3 WC, 3/3 CoCetc) Emp Frostbolt was normally a talent I avoided, but 2 points for 4 crit and 10% dmg seems like a good investment.
Honestly, the spec I listed is perhaps too general. You either require more of the defensive talents or you should drop some of the stuff for more offense depending on the matrix. You should have strong burst with the spec either through BF procs combined with PoM, FoF->lance->pomfrostbolt, or typical shatter combos. (Or both)
The Arcane talents seem pretty strong in TC. 140 all resists with Mage Armor up. Six percent all damage mitigation + roughly 5% additional physical from Arc Fort. Instant Invisibility. PoM. Imp CS. Mana Shield is still likely to be changed and the current Calculator I linked doesn't reflect some of the updates from Blue. (Imp Frost Ward has been changed to no longer reflect, but instead 15/30% to nullify the spell and absorb the damage as mana which is hard for me to value right now)
Obviously this will all change as talents continue to evolve. Even though I'm a big fan of Chilled to the Bone generally -- it's hard to justify going past 44 in Frost when those 27 (or 28) get you relatively much more in the other trees. (PoM, Imp Blink, and Instant Invis or Bwave and Blazing Speed) Deep Freeze will have to be substantially better -- the damage scaling on it blows and it does less than an Ice Lance on a frozen target currently.
This is probably just poor design currently as both the Frost 45-50 and 51 point talents are "PvP" talents -- they just aren't very good considering what you give up.
Frost DKs have been totally changed as of last night's talent calculator and will now have zero synergy with mages. No talents that freeze targets or deal additional damage to frozen targets. No Frozen Runeweapon. Gay.
You can obviously swap some stuff around if you find Imp AM necessary or you want a different mix of Frost talents. (drop perma and 1/3 blizz, go down to 2/3 WC, 3/3 CoCetc) Emp Frostbolt was normally a talent I avoided, but 2 points for 4 crit and 10% dmg seems like a good investment.
Honestly, the spec I listed is perhaps too general. You either require more of the defensive talents or you should drop some of the stuff for more offense depending on the matrix. You should have strong burst with the spec either through BF procs combined with PoM, FoF->lance->pomfrostbolt, or typical shatter combos. (Or both)
The Arcane talents seem pretty strong in TC. 140 all resists with Mage Armor up. Six percent all damage mitigation + roughly 5% additional physical from Arc Fort. Instant Invisibility. PoM. Imp CS. Mana Shield is still likely to be changed and the current Calculator I linked doesn't reflect some of the updates from Blue. (Imp Frost Ward has been changed to no longer reflect, but instead 15/30% to nullify the spell and absorb the damage as mana which is hard for me to value right now)
Obviously this will all change as talents continue to evolve. Even though I'm a big fan of Chilled to the Bone generally -- it's hard to justify going past 44 in Frost when those 27 (or 28) get you relatively much more in the other trees. (PoM, Imp Blink, and Instant Invis or Bwave and Blazing Speed) Deep Freeze will have to be substantially better -- the damage scaling on it blows and it does less than an Ice Lance on a frozen target currently.
This is probably just poor design currently as both the Frost 45-50 and 51 point talents are "PvP" talents -- they just aren't very good considering what you give up.
Frost DKs have been totally changed as of last night's talent calculator and will now have zero synergy with mages. No talents that freeze targets or deal additional damage to frozen targets. No Frozen Runeweapon. Gay.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Lack of Posting
Nothing to talk about really as Beta talents are still mostly broken. Tried out the Barrage->AB rotation w/ 33% haste and could not pull it off with any consistency, so I'm not really sure how practical the theorycrafting is for that spec.
Messed around as 0/27/41 and dueled Ming a few times, probably went 3-5 or 3-6 or so. Shadow Dance is pretty ridiculous -- basically 5-5.5k on me even in 440 resil. Sprint+Shadow Dance basically is 9 seconds of snare immunity and that chained with CloS is pretty ridiculous.
I was going for kites in all the duels which is probably not wise, against daggers you probably have to toe and toe and just IB the dance. You either tank Cloak or tank Dance it seems.
Deadly Throw is also hitting ridiculously hard. (2.5k crits on me) I assume that's intended...
It's definitely one of those things where, if you can survive cloak and dance, the fight feels pretty simple, but you're generally so far behind at that point that it hardly matters. (It's also weird to be at 40% health about to bandage and get killed 40-0 from an ambush lol)
Water Elemental damage really doesn't scale much, so you're generally forced to do a lot more of the damage than previously.
I'm not sure if the burst Shadow Dance provides is exactly intended or not, but the 3k Barriers feel a lot less significant against ambushes that in mediocre gear at 77 crit (and often) for shy of 6k.
That being said, it reminds me a bit of 60 pvp, and perhaps the better anti rogue dueling specs are specs that don't try to (futilely) outlast. (hi2u 1 shot pom pyro)
Messed around as 0/27/41 and dueled Ming a few times, probably went 3-5 or 3-6 or so. Shadow Dance is pretty ridiculous -- basically 5-5.5k on me even in 440 resil. Sprint+Shadow Dance basically is 9 seconds of snare immunity and that chained with CloS is pretty ridiculous.
I was going for kites in all the duels which is probably not wise, against daggers you probably have to toe and toe and just IB the dance. You either tank Cloak or tank Dance it seems.
Deadly Throw is also hitting ridiculously hard. (2.5k crits on me) I assume that's intended...
It's definitely one of those things where, if you can survive cloak and dance, the fight feels pretty simple, but you're generally so far behind at that point that it hardly matters. (It's also weird to be at 40% health about to bandage and get killed 40-0 from an ambush lol)
Water Elemental damage really doesn't scale much, so you're generally forced to do a lot more of the damage than previously.
I'm not sure if the burst Shadow Dance provides is exactly intended or not, but the 3k Barriers feel a lot less significant against ambushes that in mediocre gear at 77 crit (and often) for shy of 6k.
That being said, it reminds me a bit of 60 pvp, and perhaps the better anti rogue dueling specs are specs that don't try to (futilely) outlast. (hi2u 1 shot pom pyro)
Monday, July 28, 2008
Mage Beta Revamp V1
The Big Changes:
Arcane Sub - 30% dispel resist. In every PvP spec.
Magic Absorb - 2 points. Should be in most PvP builds.
Imp Mana Shields - Is 20 all resists big?
Arcane Potency - Crit PoM pyro?
Arcane Emp - 9% on Arcane Blast. SICK.
Prismatic Cloak - Mage Vanish
Focus Magic - Well at least one mage per raid.
Imp Fire Blast and Incineration - SICK TIER 1 FIRE PVP
Burning Determination - Huh? But aren't you locked out...
Imp Scorch - All spells? Will ffb double dip? LOL
Blastwave - Knockback LOLOL
Dragon's Bad - Is now Dragon's Breath. 5 seconds woot.
Fiery Payback - Is the Pyro reduction only when below 35%? Is this any good?
Emp Fireball - 3/3 Less bloat for deep fire
Firestarter - Yawn PvE Fire AoE talents.
Burnout - Still sucks
Living Bomb- OMGWTFBBQ DOES THIS DO
Shattered Barrier - I don't like this. Breaks CC? Puts nova on DR? I'm sorry but this is very awkward.
Imp Water Elemental - Neat. Dunno what to think.
Brain Freeze - Nice, but what's with the name lol.
Deep Freeze - Still bad but better.
Winter's Grasp - Gone. Dickfingers sucks.
** UPDATES **
So, I can't get on Beta right now. Stupid Northrend is down. I have a ton of stuff to test, but apparently a lot isn't yet implemented. Here's a few things to check:
So when Frostfire Bolt is interrupted, I lose both fire and frost trees. But can I frostfire bolt if I lose just frost or fire? (This is perhaps a moot point, but could be good if u just eat felhunter pet silence with frostbolt and then hardcast frostfirebolt which ignores interruption with BS)
Rank 1 Focus Magic Detect Magic Style. Does this work? Are the 50 charges = 50 debuffs? LOL. This is actually really powerful and is one of those things that shouldn't be written off. (Even at just 1 charge)
I know stuff like Fingers of Butts and Living Bomb don't work at all, so that won't be testable for a while.
Shattered Barrier -- will this nova break CC? Will it be on shared DR with nova or frostbite? (Also broken afaik)
Is Water Elemental getting the same AoE avoidance as lock pets? (Imp Water Elemental is weird and bad)
Is Arcane Potency +60% crit with clearcasting and PoM up? Can you do shit like PoM->fireblast->blastwave->db->pyro? (Keeping the 30% buff for all instants you toss out)
I assume Burning Interruption is only actual interrupts and silences -- this seems quite bad to me initially.
Does ffb still double dip scorch?
Is slow somewhat more useful with 30% dispel resistance and rank 1 focus magic gaying?
Other thoughts -- I still see 19/0/52 and 17/0/54 emerging as the cliche pvp specs, but I wouldn't be shocked to see 2/21/48, 7/21/43, 2/27/42, or 7/21/43 all emerge as potentially strong specs with the current talents. Personally, I like 2/21/48 and 2/27/42 if you're playing with a rogue instead of a frost dk. (DRs on DF)
Seven in Arcane might be necessary for Magic Absorption. It screams must have to be right now. Even if you aren't hard resisting CCs, it's a sizable amount of passive damage reduction with the new 10% interval resist system. If the whole, "you can have an alternate spec" thing goes into WotLK, and you can effectively have two talent specs, I imagine one of your PvP specs will be anti-caster with stacked Mage Armor, and one will forsake these points for better anti-melee from Blazing Speed or more points in frost.
I'll toss up some links to the various builds that have my interest right now, but honestly they are pretty obvious, and a lot of the talents seem very unfinished in this build. (They just seem weirrddddd)
Arcane Sub - 30% dispel resist. In every PvP spec.
Magic Absorb - 2 points. Should be in most PvP builds.
Imp Mana Shields - Is 20 all resists big?
Arcane Potency - Crit PoM pyro?
Arcane Emp - 9% on Arcane Blast. SICK.
Prismatic Cloak - Mage Vanish
Focus Magic - Well at least one mage per raid.
Imp Fire Blast and Incineration - SICK TIER 1 FIRE PVP
Burning Determination - Huh? But aren't you locked out...
Imp Scorch - All spells? Will ffb double dip? LOL
Blastwave - Knockback LOLOL
Dragon's Bad - Is now Dragon's Breath. 5 seconds woot.
Fiery Payback - Is the Pyro reduction only when below 35%? Is this any good?
Emp Fireball - 3/3 Less bloat for deep fire
Firestarter - Yawn PvE Fire AoE talents.
Burnout - Still sucks
Living Bomb- OMGWTFBBQ DOES THIS DO
Shattered Barrier - I don't like this. Breaks CC? Puts nova on DR? I'm sorry but this is very awkward.
Imp Water Elemental - Neat. Dunno what to think.
Brain Freeze - Nice, but what's with the name lol.
Deep Freeze - Still bad but better.
Winter's Grasp - Gone. Dickfingers sucks.
** UPDATES **
So, I can't get on Beta right now. Stupid Northrend is down. I have a ton of stuff to test, but apparently a lot isn't yet implemented. Here's a few things to check:
So when Frostfire Bolt is interrupted, I lose both fire and frost trees. But can I frostfire bolt if I lose just frost or fire? (This is perhaps a moot point, but could be good if u just eat felhunter pet silence with frostbolt and then hardcast frostfirebolt which ignores interruption with BS)
Rank 1 Focus Magic Detect Magic Style. Does this work? Are the 50 charges = 50 debuffs? LOL. This is actually really powerful and is one of those things that shouldn't be written off. (Even at just 1 charge)
I know stuff like Fingers of Butts and Living Bomb don't work at all, so that won't be testable for a while.
Shattered Barrier -- will this nova break CC? Will it be on shared DR with nova or frostbite? (Also broken afaik)
Is Water Elemental getting the same AoE avoidance as lock pets? (Imp Water Elemental is weird and bad)
Is Arcane Potency +60% crit with clearcasting and PoM up? Can you do shit like PoM->fireblast->blastwave->db->pyro? (Keeping the 30% buff for all instants you toss out)
I assume Burning Interruption is only actual interrupts and silences -- this seems quite bad to me initially.
Does ffb still double dip scorch?
Is slow somewhat more useful with 30% dispel resistance and rank 1 focus magic gaying?
Other thoughts -- I still see 19/0/52 and 17/0/54 emerging as the cliche pvp specs, but I wouldn't be shocked to see 2/21/48, 7/21/43, 2/27/42, or 7/21/43 all emerge as potentially strong specs with the current talents. Personally, I like 2/21/48 and 2/27/42 if you're playing with a rogue instead of a frost dk. (DRs on DF)
Seven in Arcane might be necessary for Magic Absorption. It screams must have to be right now. Even if you aren't hard resisting CCs, it's a sizable amount of passive damage reduction with the new 10% interval resist system. If the whole, "you can have an alternate spec" thing goes into WotLK, and you can effectively have two talent specs, I imagine one of your PvP specs will be anti-caster with stacked Mage Armor, and one will forsake these points for better anti-melee from Blazing Speed or more points in frost.
I'll toss up some links to the various builds that have my interest right now, but honestly they are pretty obvious, and a lot of the talents seem very unfinished in this build. (They just seem weirrddddd)
A Misconception
Frostfire Bolt is exclusively a raiding spell. It isn't useful at all otherwise. It won't own in PvP. It will get interrupted locking out both your spell trees. Or it will get LoS'd. Or it doesn't matter because, without debuffs, it's a slower casting and less damaging frostbolt. Stop talking about elementalist in PvP. Kill yourselves. Thank you.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
The Beta Change Nobody Is Talking About
You can no longer fake casts. Starting any cast triggers a GCD. Stopping the cast does not cancel the GCD triggered.
Filefront link, here.
You can see that when I cancel frostbolt about 3/4 second into the cast, the global cooldown continues to tick on my bars. Pretty interesting. =p
Filefront link, here.
You can see that when I cancel frostbolt about 3/4 second into the cast, the global cooldown continues to tick on my bars. Pretty interesting. =p
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
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
Beta Thoughts
It's quite premature to really talk too seriously about the state of WotLK. It is so ridiculously broken at the moment that whenn I read people TCing about "X is so OP omgz", I think, thank you Raptor Jesus from sparing me from The Downs.
I'm going to talk about mages here, because well, I like wizard hats and robes and stuff. Especially that Mickey Mouse Fantasia shit. Mages need brooms. Conjure brooms on a motherfucker.
I'm going to talk about both PvE and PvP a little -- with WotLK, I'd like to PvE again, as I feel a little weird really only understanding half of the class, and well, I miss talking about dicks with my friends.
From a PvE perspective, I'm of the opinion that all that matters is that the class is fun to play and warrants a raid spot so that I can talk about dicks with my friends. To that end, being in a "high" end guild (they sucked in TBC without me, but I'm used to bitches sucking without me), it needs to be optimal for me, as a mage, to be in the raid. In TBC, it is not optimal to have mages in raids. You're better with zero. You can bring more. But there are better raid compositions. If you're a mage in a raid, you're bringing the team down like that fat kid who was the coach's son in soccer. Fatty. Fatso. Fats. Yeah you. Fatty.
At some point, gameplay evolved, i.e. people got less retarded, and PvE became less about individual performance and more about designing the best groups you could. It doesn't matter what your single DPS is, it matters how much you contribute to the raid DPS. If you do 2500 DPS as a mage, and your Shaman friend does 1800, this doesn't matter if you add that same 2500 DPS to the raid but he contributes 3000. This is pretty obvious logic by now, but when I raided, it wasn't really the conventional way of thinking. Bring people who didn't suck and die was basically our mantra. Die-rs fucking suck.
What about utility? Food and water can be bought. I know. I buy them in Beta. It doesn't fucking matter. Arcane Intellect is probably the worse group buff in the game. Warlock Felhunters will be buffing Intellect more.
What about crowd control? Everyone has CC. Hunter traps. Repentance. Blind. Sap. Hex. Fear. Banish. Poly is a good PvE CC. It's useful for clearing trash. Never necessary. Rarely relevant in boss encounters.
What about AoE? Everyone has AoE. Warlocks do, and look like they may continue, to outdamage us when it comes to AE, and they can do it at a safe distance. What mages do bring here is the ability to mass snare and control mobs. Hunters can do this (perhaps better) and so can Wars with PH, but mages are undeniably good as any spec (better with imp blizz obviously) at controlling big groups of mobs.
You can try to break out the utility functions and justify the potency of mages, but realistically, you bring mages to raids for their damage. And to this end, a mage, because he does not increase the group's damage (beyond imp scorch) has to do enough damage solo to make up for his lack of synergy. Now obviously if a mage does so much damage that the synergies provided by the hybrid classes are not worth more than a mage, these hybrids won't find raid spots, and we'll be back to WoW 1.0 with 8mage-6rogue raids.
This is all very long winded and very very beaten to death, so I'll stop with saying mages need zomgdamage in pve, and get to the point, does WotLK look like it will provide it, and how?
Maybe.
Starting off, the fire tree is useless.
Fire benefits from having the most multipliers of any of our trees. It loses a lot of this advantage, and all of the new talents suck. Fireball is a dead spell with Frostfire Bolt in the game. A 0/33/38 type spec or even a 0/36/35 will destroy any deep fire spec.
In PvP, fire has been pretty terrible post 60. The tree relies on scorch in PvP, which is just not potent enough with the bigger health pools. (No, I don't think survivability is the issue, the issue is that you have no good weapons as fire) Fire also has no controllable burst. Arcane has PoM. Frost has Shatter. Fire has...DB and Blastwave? Dragon's Breath will continue to suck. The spell needs a severe redesign, which it doesn't seem likely to get. The tree will need huge changes and it's basically not worth talking about as everything about it sucks, and sucks hard.
Frost is neat, but frustrating. The best new talent is obviously Winter's Grasp. I'll hold off on a PvE WG discussion for now. In PvE, this talent, ignoring Ffb, is sick and actually makes you play the game. I really hope they don't nerf it to the point where Frost is back to spamming Frostbolt ad infinitum. To play "perfectly" as a Frost Mage while raiding will be a challenge, and it's possible you'll see differentiation effects depending on who can best use their WG procs. Managing WG gets complicated particularly if the boss moves or if your haste changes dynamically during the encounter.
In PvP, WG is a pretty low proc rate. I don't think spamming lance and hoping for a proc is that amazing. You basically would only do this against Wars, Rogues, Retadins, and DKs, and you realistically, will only be able to do this against Wars and Retadins. I say this from a 1v1 perspective, but tbh, they way you kite Wars and Retadins in arenas is pretty similar to how you would in a duel, and WG will be nice, but not OMG. It's just going to be the mage version of sword spec. Gay RNG stupidity when it procs that's going to cause severe nerdrage.
Deep Freeze. Sucks. I already talked about this. But it really sucks. Really. The animation is gay too.
Chilled to the Bone is amazing. It's the other "really good" talent that people TC'd about it when the talents first dropped, and it lives up to expectations. CoC is beast with it. Frostbolting to snare beyond hamstring also has good arena potential. You have to remember that, relatively, a hamstringed priest will move 60% faster than a CoC'd war. Here's hoping for a 10% more snare inscription. =p Who needs roots. ^^
To be Continued....
I'm going to talk about mages here, because well, I like wizard hats and robes and stuff. Especially that Mickey Mouse Fantasia shit. Mages need brooms. Conjure brooms on a motherfucker.
I'm going to talk about both PvE and PvP a little -- with WotLK, I'd like to PvE again, as I feel a little weird really only understanding half of the class, and well, I miss talking about dicks with my friends.
From a PvE perspective, I'm of the opinion that all that matters is that the class is fun to play and warrants a raid spot so that I can talk about dicks with my friends. To that end, being in a "high" end guild (they sucked in TBC without me, but I'm used to bitches sucking without me), it needs to be optimal for me, as a mage, to be in the raid. In TBC, it is not optimal to have mages in raids. You're better with zero. You can bring more. But there are better raid compositions. If you're a mage in a raid, you're bringing the team down like that fat kid who was the coach's son in soccer. Fatty. Fatso. Fats. Yeah you. Fatty.
At some point, gameplay evolved, i.e. people got less retarded, and PvE became less about individual performance and more about designing the best groups you could. It doesn't matter what your single DPS is, it matters how much you contribute to the raid DPS. If you do 2500 DPS as a mage, and your Shaman friend does 1800, this doesn't matter if you add that same 2500 DPS to the raid but he contributes 3000. This is pretty obvious logic by now, but when I raided, it wasn't really the conventional way of thinking. Bring people who didn't suck and die was basically our mantra. Die-rs fucking suck.
What about utility? Food and water can be bought. I know. I buy them in Beta. It doesn't fucking matter. Arcane Intellect is probably the worse group buff in the game. Warlock Felhunters will be buffing Intellect more.
What about crowd control? Everyone has CC. Hunter traps. Repentance. Blind. Sap. Hex. Fear. Banish. Poly is a good PvE CC. It's useful for clearing trash. Never necessary. Rarely relevant in boss encounters.
What about AoE? Everyone has AoE. Warlocks do, and look like they may continue, to outdamage us when it comes to AE, and they can do it at a safe distance. What mages do bring here is the ability to mass snare and control mobs. Hunters can do this (perhaps better) and so can Wars with PH, but mages are undeniably good as any spec (better with imp blizz obviously) at controlling big groups of mobs.
You can try to break out the utility functions and justify the potency of mages, but realistically, you bring mages to raids for their damage. And to this end, a mage, because he does not increase the group's damage (beyond imp scorch) has to do enough damage solo to make up for his lack of synergy. Now obviously if a mage does so much damage that the synergies provided by the hybrid classes are not worth more than a mage, these hybrids won't find raid spots, and we'll be back to WoW 1.0 with 8mage-6rogue raids.
This is all very long winded and very very beaten to death, so I'll stop with saying mages need zomgdamage in pve, and get to the point, does WotLK look like it will provide it, and how?
Maybe.
Starting off, the fire tree is useless.
Fire benefits from having the most multipliers of any of our trees. It loses a lot of this advantage, and all of the new talents suck. Fireball is a dead spell with Frostfire Bolt in the game. A 0/33/38 type spec or even a 0/36/35 will destroy any deep fire spec.
In PvP, fire has been pretty terrible post 60. The tree relies on scorch in PvP, which is just not potent enough with the bigger health pools. (No, I don't think survivability is the issue, the issue is that you have no good weapons as fire) Fire also has no controllable burst. Arcane has PoM. Frost has Shatter. Fire has...DB and Blastwave? Dragon's Breath will continue to suck. The spell needs a severe redesign, which it doesn't seem likely to get. The tree will need huge changes and it's basically not worth talking about as everything about it sucks, and sucks hard.
Frost is neat, but frustrating. The best new talent is obviously Winter's Grasp. I'll hold off on a PvE WG discussion for now. In PvE, this talent, ignoring Ffb, is sick and actually makes you play the game. I really hope they don't nerf it to the point where Frost is back to spamming Frostbolt ad infinitum. To play "perfectly" as a Frost Mage while raiding will be a challenge, and it's possible you'll see differentiation effects depending on who can best use their WG procs. Managing WG gets complicated particularly if the boss moves or if your haste changes dynamically during the encounter.
In PvP, WG is a pretty low proc rate. I don't think spamming lance and hoping for a proc is that amazing. You basically would only do this against Wars, Rogues, Retadins, and DKs, and you realistically, will only be able to do this against Wars and Retadins. I say this from a 1v1 perspective, but tbh, they way you kite Wars and Retadins in arenas is pretty similar to how you would in a duel, and WG will be nice, but not OMG. It's just going to be the mage version of sword spec. Gay RNG stupidity when it procs that's going to cause severe nerdrage.
Deep Freeze. Sucks. I already talked about this. But it really sucks. Really. The animation is gay too.
Chilled to the Bone is amazing. It's the other "really good" talent that people TC'd about it when the talents first dropped, and it lives up to expectations. CoC is beast with it. Frostbolting to snare beyond hamstring also has good arena potential. You have to remember that, relatively, a hamstringed priest will move 60% faster than a CoC'd war. Here's hoping for a 10% more snare inscription. =p Who needs roots. ^^
To be Continued....
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