This is from Enthorn, on Dunemaul, in the guild Shadow Brotherhood. It’s a good list of actual problems/proposed solutions. My previous essay, which was myths, is what you should read if you have objections to anything here — e.g., “We can’t give mages better gems, then they’d do more dps!”
It’s from the same monster thread that my previous post was in: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17899801584&sid=1&pageNo=1
Also, my additions to his list are in italics.
- Combustion reworked
- Playing With Fire: positive should outweigh negative
- Flamestrike radius increased from 5 to 8 yards. Ground DoT radius from 5 to 10.
- Burnout: additional mana cost scales negatively with crit rates
- Student of the Mind increased from 4/7/10 to possibly 5/10/15%.
- Arcane Fortitude and Magic Absorption switched with Arcane Subtlety and Arcane Focus. This immensely helps fire in particular for PvP but also helps FB/TTW and even Frostfire builds pick up necessary Magic Absorption talent without having to pick up talents that only Arcane mages want.
- Scorch min range with Flame Throwing is 36 – Fire Blast is 26, a 10 yard difference that makes Fire Blast almost impossible to use in PvE for mobility fights.
- Furthermore, FB/TTW is unable to pick up talents like Imp. Fire Blast and Incineration, yet Frostfire Bolt builds can due to not having to spec 5 points into Improved Fireball.
- Finally, Scorch and Fireblast having a restricted range removes any benefit from Flame Throwing for all other firemage spells. Fire spells should be base 36′ or base 30′. Not a range from 20′ to 36′.
- Evocation is a necessity but when it’s interrupted or pushed back even the slightest it is incredibly detrimental to the mage’s remaining mana (if there is any) and ability to keep DPSing
- Mana Gems on on fights lasting longer than 6 minutes do not work as needed. Ideally a mage will use a mana gem about 30-45 seconds into a fight and again every 2 minutes. After 4:30-4:45, they’ll have used all three charges. At 6:30-6:45, they’ll need a fourth charge, but the cost of recreating the mana gem means that the next mana gem is only returning 964 mana. So mana gem is 142 Mp5 for the first three charges, but only 40 Mp5 for the next charge. The fight has to last even longer for the benefit to increase, but it still only can increase to 70, then 108 Mp5 after a 10:30 fight.
- Mirror Images: when you summon mirror images, your threat should be divided amongst the images. When the 30 second duration expires, you should not re-inherit the threat from the mirror images. Any threat caused during the mirror images by yourself should be returned to you, but you shouldn’t get all the threat that was divided amongst your mirror images back. Furthermore, per Manly’s suggestion, threat caused while Mirror Images are active should possibly cause 75% less threat.
- Frost PvE damage is low, etc.
- Fire PvP survivability is low, too many talents, not enough points, mana costs are high
- Arcane PvE talent tree is bloated in the same way
- Spellsteal mana cost is ridiculously high in contrast with its success rate. Dispel resistance mechanics further hurt it, and 2 minutes for a buff is a bit low.
- Cold Snap doesn’t always reset all frost spells
- Mana Shield is only useful for an Arcane mage, has no use whatsoever in PvE, and even for an Arcane mage, its design of absorbing damage and lowering a mana pool that the mage needs to kill his enemy with is contradictory. You’re absorbing damage to survive, but you’re losing the resource you need to kill the target after you’ve “survived.”
- Mage survivability in PvE is low. We need to keep accessible talents to reduce magic damage taken (i.e. don’t move Magic Absorption out of reach.)
- Trainable Ice Barrier would help both fire pvp and raiding pve.
- Way too many mana regen talents. For instance, arcane mages are speccing 3 points into Arcane Meditation to pick up 50% regen. With Mage Armor up, that’s another 50%. This makes Glyph of Mage Armor entirely useless. It’s a DPS loss to use Mage Armor over Molten Armor, furthermore, so no one would ever drop 3 points from Arcane Meditation and use Mage Armor instead of Molten Armor.
- In other words, Glyph of Mage Armor is useless, and the 50% regen on Mage Armor isn’t used by any PvE spec.
- Glyph of Fire Blast is useless.
- Glyph of Improved Scorch should be a minor glyph.
- Glyph of Mana Gem should be a minor glyph.
Tags: mage
Mages would benefit from having the kind of consolidation seen in destro warlocks, where the cast time reduction talents are all consolidated into bane, crit increases all in ruin. It would let the fire and frost trees be cleared out some, and allow for a more logical subspec than arcane for ttw is.
These are some great points. I hope Blizzard listens… if them implement even half of these I’ll be happy at the improvement.
The Q&A was such a joke, they brushed off pretty much every important question.
Kyth, you and others are fighting the good fight, but my sense is that GC is just plain not paying attention to mage issues, or even acknowledging they exist. The same matters have been brought up for months with zero result. Hell, some of these issues go all the way back to Beta (frost pve was theorycrafted as being seriously subpar that far back, and this way pointed out in Beta.)
Also, grats on Algonon! We Turalyon folks are awful proud to have you on our little server.
Thanks
Yeah a lot of these issues are spot on. One issue I did find, when did arcane specs glyph or even use Mage Armor in the last patch or so? They buffed it very well, but with skill it’s useless and not even detrimental to an Arcane build. Very similar to what somewhat happened to Arcane Barrage. With it to be used only as a debuff throwaway and not a damaging spell, unless very low and mana or in movement. I guess not the best comparison, but I know what I mean. I do love the way GC states Blizzard is “watching Mages” from one of his talks to the ppl around 3.0 and the launch of 3.1. We fortunately got some love in Wrath, but it doesn’t last long. Locks (aka our rivals in the typical thought) get dangerously powerful everytime the QQ to a point, but we QQ insanely in many comparisons. Which imo comes from the typical mage ego… Yes we all have one. We are more theory based and its part of any good mage, and unfortunately Blizz hits us in the nads whenever the please. These fixes look right, but the issue is fixing them and not making us OP… Well make us OP I’d be happy for the week
When I say QQ I mean liberally talk about a debuff, not actually cry about it. Even though some do.