Raiding as a Mage in WotLK
Dufe — Fri, 08/15/2008 - 12:26
Now that Blizzard has spent some time on the Mage talent trees, I thought it might be good to start looking ahead at how Mages will work in raids. A number of their changes increase synergies between the three schools, though mostly only for a Mage's personal damage. The big raid synergy changes come one in each tree:
- Arcane Focus adds 150 spell damage to ALL spells hitting the target. A significant buff to all dps casters.
- Improved Scorch now adds 10% to Fire, Frost and Arcane damage. So having at least one Fire Mage in raid will now be a massive boost to the damage output of ANY other Mages, any Fire Warlocks, any Frost Death Knights, and any Moonkin Druids.
- Winter's Chill, like Improved Scorch, now adds 10% Critical Strike Chance to Fire, Frost and Arcane damage spells. So, like scorch, having at least one Frost Mage in raid will be a boost to the damage output of ANY other Mages, any Fire Warlocks, any Frost Death Knights, and any Moonkin Druids.
Fire Mages will still have the same synergy with each other in terms of putting/keeping the Scorch debuff up. [(Edit: No longer valid.) Frost Mages will have a new synergy with each other though: Fingers of Frost.] Fingers of Frost gives your frost spells a 10% chance for the target to be "considered frozen" (for your spells only) for 4 sec. This may make Shatter viable in raid, even on bosses, as the combination would effectively raise the critical strike chance of your frost spells by 5%. Whether or not it's worth 7 talent points versus other places those points might be spent is a little up in the air without it contributing any synergy.
It also looks like "AOE" may mean more than Arcane Explosion in WotLK. Buffs to the AOE spells in Fire/Frost plus a reworking of threat generation may be dramatic changes. So a Fire Mage, in particular, may be able to lean on actual fire AOE spells and not spec into the Arcane tree for reduced threat on Arcane Explosion. An interesting side note here: The new Fire talent "World in Flames" refers to increasing the critical strike chance of Blizzard. Blizzard being able to crit in WotLK would be a significant buff to frost AOE.
So, with all of the above in mind, I would see two specs being mixed in a raid setting for the best synergy. It's still too early (IMO) to say which tree/spec will for sure be the ulitmate in personal dps, or how the balance of personal dps loss/raid dps gain will look.
If I had two Mages in raid, and was looking for the best raid synergy, I would take one Frost: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=of0VMuZZVAccoft0fzgbsx and one Fire: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=oZcEcbRhIuVubGstbhcbo
A couple of the points are a bit flexible. [(Edit: no longer valid.) If I had three Mages, I would take 1 Fire and 2 Frost, again with overall raid synergy being the goal. Not only would two Frost Mages boost each other's critical strike chance by 5% over what they would have alone, but that combined with having two Mages with arcane focus I think would outweigh the personal dps gain of having two scorchers. Depending on how high the personal dps of an Arcane Mage will be, it is possible that having that third Mage be Arcane with the Arcane Focus talent would be better for overall raid dps.]
Of course, things may still change and I'm not in the beta to get the full feel for what end-game gearing looks like, but this is how things look to me so far.
Did some digging around the
Dufe — Sat, 08/23/2008 - 10:55Did some digging around the forums today and found:
damage, as it's traditionally been. When first designing the classes,
we always intended the Mage to be the king of AOE and for AOE to be an
important part in the game. Living Bomb, and other talents in the tree
are intended to bring the Mage back in line with our original vision.
Part of what pegged the Mage down a notch was Seed of Corruption, which
ended up being better than we anticipated.
That said, again, we do want Fire to be a strong single target DPS
spec along with Frost and Arcane. Frost is not intended to be the Mages
"PvP spec" and Fire isn't intended to be the "PvE spec," they only
turned out that way because of unintended factors. We're trying to make
Frost more viable in raiding by allowing you to effectively freeze the
target without having to nova it, allowing you to throw in some
"shatter combos" in your rotation. Arcane, Frost, and Fire (and a mix
thereof) should all more or less be viable in as many aspects of the
game as possible. Where they should be different is in playstyle and
gameplay differences (stacking Scorch vs. freezing and shatter etc.).
AOE will be more prevalent in encounters in the game, yes. However,
Fire mages are assuming they're being converted into a pure AOE spec,
which is not the case. We want the strong AOE to just be a feature of
the Fire Mage. The Fire Mage doesn't need a new single target DPS nuke
or ability as a 51-point talent in order to continue to be a good
single target DPS class.
"koraa, NONE of us want to be AOE
kings, when we signed up for this class the little manual said mages
were powerfull single target damage dealers. What made you guys decide
to make us AOE kings? that has to be the most worthless title of all
time. no part of any boss is as significant as the single target damage
you deal to it. I dont want to be the king of trash pulls, i want to be
the king of *%!@ing blowing the %%*# out of this boss with a gigantic
ball of fire. Please fix our class we dont want to be aoe kings, we
want to be single target *%!@ you up kings." (Quoted from an obvious idiot, imo)
There's no reason why you can't be both, which is my point. (Koraa)
Even if it stayed at 1024 it
Dufe — Sat, 08/23/2008 - 02:18Even if it stayed at 1024 it would be rediculous. Most of the other nukes are ~15-20% of base mana . . . not 40%. And remember that's UN-RAMPED. Each application of the debuff (stacks three times) increases the mana cost by another 75% - putting 3 stacks at ~5K mana. So fully ramped it will just be a joke. The gear ramping in WotLK is not supposed to be nearly as severe as BC, and that seems very evident in-game so far. Maybe someone higher level can correct me, but I don't know if a lvl 80 would have more than 20-25k mana. A nuke that you can only cast 5 times before OOM? If it was only supposed to be an end-fight mana dump, I would expect it to do alot more dmg than it does at that price.
But your base mana doesn't
saedo — Fri, 08/22/2008 - 18:32But your base mana doesn't go up as fast. Unlike the mana you'd obtain from gear and stuff. So at level 80 it'd cost what? 1170ish mana?
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Well, our mana will go up by
Dufe — Fri, 08/22/2008 - 18:14Well, our mana will go up by lvl 80, but so will the cost of AB. Spells will all be a % of base mana (AB is 40%), so it will go up even more from that. To give you an idea, the cost of un-ramped AB in the current live release is 195 mana - same exact spell in WotlK at the same lvl 70 is 1024 mana un-ramped. (Just looked it up in-game to be sure.)
R emember, your mana pool
starstalker — Fri, 08/22/2008 - 16:53R emember, your mana pool will be going up as well, due to higher level and items having more Int.
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Avocado burns your fat inside of you. Rice does not give you fat. Seaweed gives you buffs
Let us know what you end up
Karli — Fri, 08/22/2008 - 16:53Let us know what you end up finding out about the mana cost of AB dufe. Sounds to me like it's either a bug or part of a planned shift to some other way of thinking about using AB. End of fight mana dump doesn't sound quite right.
AB is supposed to be like
Shinso — Fri, 08/22/2008 - 14:24AB is supposed to be like the end of fight mana dump.
Even so . . . that's too
Dufe — Fri, 08/22/2008 - 16:45Even so . . . that's too expensive.
Arcane Barrage is . . .
Dufe — Fri, 08/22/2008 - 12:21Arcane Barrage is . . . amazing. Low cost, instant, 3 second cd, and it's critting for over 3.1k in my current gear.
There's gonna be like that
saedo — Fri, 08/22/2008 - 12:17There's gonna be like that Arcane Barrage too right?
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Hmm . . . don't know if this
Dufe — Fri, 08/22/2008 - 12:09Hmm . . . don't know if this is a bug or a sick joke, but at lvl 70 the same rank of Arcane Blast I use in raids right now, costs over 800 mana . . . with NO debuff. Fully ramped it's like 2k mana. Or maybe they just decided they don't like AB or don't actually want it used as a primary nuke but don't yet have the gumption to just replace it or remove it, who knows.
blah to the mage... blah to
Nellem1 — Sun, 08/17/2008 - 02:09blah to the mage... blah to him! =P
what doesnt die right away, will always have my ticking on their mind.
also, it should be noticed:
Nellem1 — Fri, 08/15/2008 - 23:06also, it should be noticed: changes to the destruction tree for locks has a steady but dramatic change in their choice in damage. The new additions are going deeper into the fire portion of the tree. very little is being added, from what ive read, to further the shadow damage portion of that tree. Locks are being turned into mages. So, any affects that a fire mage has on the raid dps will most likely start affecting locks also. Unless, of course, there's a change in the number of Demo locks with the new addition of Demon Form (which appears to be more of a solo spec than anything else).
Am I wrong here? im tired, i may have misread some of the information.
what doesnt die right away, will always have my ticking on their mind.
Nel. Notice to title of this
Crazytexan — Sat, 08/16/2008 - 18:58Nel. Notice to title of this post. Peddel your lock propaganda elsewhere....maybe the hunter forum. Jk man just bustn ya balls.
another important change is
Shinso — Fri, 08/15/2008 - 20:05another important change is to AB. It now only has a 3sec debuff instead of 8 or w/e it used to be.
Ah, you're right - I didn't
Dufe — Fri, 08/15/2008 - 16:45Ah, you're right - I didn't read the new one in enough detail. In which case, Frost Mages gain no extra synergy from having more than 1 in raid. Additional mages (beyond the first 2) could probably be equally beneficial as any spec then, either helping with scorch or helping with Arcane Focus.
FOF is self buff only. your
Shinso — Fri, 08/15/2008 - 16:33FOF is self buff only. your thinkging grasp which was a mob debuff.
See with our current raid
Disrupter — Fri, 08/15/2008 - 12:46See with our current raid set up in Hamfist , or atleast , prior to Brutallus... we had the perfect (as far as I can tell) # of mages, and one of each spec.
With these changes, each mage will be a huge boost to the other mages dps, and to any caster that uses arcane/fire/frost spells. (Which, includes a me, a moonkin :P)
10% crit from a mage, 10% damage from the other, nomnomnom. IS is quickly looking to be utterly, useless... lol. (Insect Swarm)