Just wondering amidst the mild panic that's setting in around here about Mage dps and mana regen on the PTRs, is there still a plan to make "Spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all mages," as was announced in the 3.1 teasers, or has this change been shelved or scrapped entirely?
If it is still planned, could we get some idea of what and/or when it will be?
Also, any suggestions from the Mage community on what to do with Spirit? I would personally like to see some spirit -> spell damage scaling like Boomkin, Warlocks, and Shadowpriests got in 3.0.

Edit: Before the inevitable armory trashing begins, I logged in RP gear.

My mages ask me for my Innervate. It caused my jaw to hang open the first time I read it. I finally argued on a trade of Focus Magic for Innervate.

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Q u o t e:
While this may be fun (in the sense that running around in a video game on god mode might be fun), we don't think it's ultimately good for the game.

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Are you serious?

EDIT: I do not want to sound rude, but mages are FAR away from God-mode right now. Maybe arcane has the tools to keep their mana up but TTW/FB is not up to par in that department. Throw in some threat issues and it is not looking anywhere close to God-mode.
Regarding Spirit - we direly *need* it to do something other then provide trivial mana regen since almost all of the caster gear in 3.1 has Spirit on it.

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Q u o t e:

Are you serious?

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Are you seriously asking that question? God mode is bad for a game once the initial enjoyment wears off.

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Q u o t e:

Are you serious?

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Saying unlimited mana would be god mode makes me angry, it fills me with RAGE and negative ENERGY.

GC, the most competitive mage specs as of this post are Arcane and TTW fire, which are both extremely mana-hungry. Most (see: almost all) of the released new badge gear is chock full o' spirit, which is kind of the dead fish floating on top of the mage gear pool.
If you guys don't intend to give mages the spirit to damage buff handed to priests or warlocks, could you make it so we have less of a struggle with mana? More spirit gives more mana from mana gems, shaves time off of Evocation, something like that?
Just throwing out ideas, here.

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Q u o t e:


Saying unlimited mana would be god mode makes me angry, it fills me with RAGE and negative ENERGY.

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Further proof locks are OP moar nerfs.

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Q u o t e:
It is still in the plan. The goal is to make it so that a mage who avoids all the gear with spirit does not have significantly higher dps than the mage with the (more common) gear with spirit.

Regeneration itself is just something we're going to have to test more, especially on the PTR. We've made it clear that we think it is too easy to ignore mana as a resource currently on live. While this may be fun (in the sense that running around in a video game on god mode might be fun), we don't think it's ultimately good for the game. We don't want to go to the opposite extreme however where you use 3 spells and run dry.

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Do you have plans to address this PvE issue seperately from PvP? As it stands, all dps casters in general pretty much SUCK for arena combat, and the finite supply of mana is one of several factors contributing to that. Why should Warlocks (though limited) be the only dps caster able to compete against melee and healer specs?

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Q u o t e:
Regeneration itself is just something we're going to have to test more, especially on the PTR. We've made it clear that we think it is too easy to ignore mana as a resource currently on live. While this may be fun (in the sense that running around in a video game on god mode might be fun), we don't think it's ultimately good for the game. We don't want to go to the opposite extreme however where you use 3 spells and run dry.

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So you'll consider maybe reducing the cost of arcane's spells then?

Please?

Pretty please?

:(

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Q u o t e:

Regeneration itself is just something we're going to have to test more, especially on the PTR. We've made it clear that we think it is too easy to ignore mana as a resource currently on live. While this may be fun (in the sense that running around in a video game on god mode might be fun), we don't think it's ultimately good for the game. We don't want to go to the opposite extreme however where you use 3 spells and run dry.

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Mages have *significantly* more issues in pve maintaining mana -- and that's not even considering the severe issues when evocation is interrupted or there's raid damage that causes pushback.

Are you also going to substantially reduce the mana regen of the other mana-using DPS classes to bring them down to the mage level?

An unavoidable event shouldn't be able to kill a firemage as much as it does (having to move right when you start an evoc -- exactly when am I supposed to evoc on Hodir for example?) Evocation is molten-core era class design: there isn't space on new encounters to channel an 8-second spell with no pushback protection which serves as a flat out *critical* part of your regen.


Alternatively, will you finally give us a real mana regen mechanic like warlocks and hunters have (and rogues don't need)?


The problem is that the current situation:

- mages do not have infinite mana like the hybrids generally enjoy
- mages do not have a spammable regen source like all the pure dps classes enjoy
- mages do not even have reliable regen from the tools they have

really isn't very tenable. Something needs to give.

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Q u o t e:

Are you serious?

EDIT: I do not want to sound rude, but mages are FAR away from God-mode right now.

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Pretty sure he's referring to the bulk of Naxx fights where people kill bosses in ~2 min and mages generally top the meters.

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Q u o t e:
It is still in the plan. The goal is to make it so that a mage who avoids all the gear with spirit does not have significantly higher dps than the mage with the (more common) gear with spirit.

Regeneration itself is just something we're going to have to test more, especially on the PTR. We've made it clear that we think it is too easy to ignore mana as a resource currently on live. While this may be fun (in the sense that running around in a video game on god mode might be fun), we don't think it's ultimately good for the game. We don't want to go to the opposite extreme however where you use 3 spells and run dry.

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i'm with you GC. Those darn mages are the worst offenders. I have never seen a mage go OOM in any encounter.

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Q u o t e:


Mages have *significantly* more issues in pve maintaining mana -- and that's not even considering the severe issues when evocation is interrupted or there's raid damage that causes pushback.

Are you also going to substantially reduce the mana regen of elemental shaman, moonkin, and shadowpriests to bring them down to the mage level?

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Moonkin regen sucks with the spirit changes for 3.1. The vast majority or my raid mana comes from replenishment, totems and wisdom....

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Q u o t e:
We don't want to go to the opposite extreme however where you use 3 spells and run dry.

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Except with druids and lifebloom

jk
but you still need to work on it

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Q u o t e:
Mages have *significantly* more issues in pve maintaining mana -- and that's not even considering the severe issues when evocation is interrupted or there's raid damage that causes pushback.

Are you also going to substantially reduce the mana regen of elemental shaman, moonkin, and shadowpriests to bring them down to the mage level?

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WTB [Aspect of the VIper] or nearest equivalent PST! >.>

Xodok, the comparison Ghostcrawler is trying to draw is that not having to worry about an essential resource to gameplay is ultimately bad for the game. If every boss were fought with Essence of the Red, a major part of gameplay would be eliminated. Rage and Energy-based gameplay both have hard DPS caps regardless of coming back indefinitely; and people who understand the mechanics behind mana classes will agree that Mage mana regeneration needs work. Don't think it's going to come in an "INFINITE MANA NO LOSS YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" package, though, because that's not how it's supposed to work.

Here's just a couple of quick suggestions -

- Grant armors significantly reduced (or free) cost through PvE talents.
- Change Glyph of (Mage/Molten) armor to affect the other as well.
- Divine Plea-type spell, either trained or early-tier talented.
- A meaningful spirit conversion in at least one of the three trees, like the old Spirit -> something (Spell Haste? Spell Crit) talent in Arcane during beta.

It's much easier to be constructive than destructive, and probably more likely to get looked at seriously.

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Q u o t e:
Are you also going to substantially reduce the mana regen of elemental shaman, moonkin, and shadowpriests to bring them down to the mage level?

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^This. So many posters saying mages need to be balanced by being mana limited. Where's the balance when an eleshammy ends fights at 90% mana without even trying?