World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> [MAGE] We want an answer

Caargon

< Validus >

Feathermoon

80. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:29:05 PM PDT

Q u o t e:

Mage threads, regardless of how constructive they attempted to be, were always notorious for bringing other classes in to the discussion for comparison and they almost always ended up as nerf cry fests. I can't even begin to count the number of times I saw complaints about warlocks not needing spirit, not just from mages but from other casters as well. Blizzard forced spirit on to warlocks by making their spell damage and life tap spell scale with it.

Don't act like this is warlock favoritism or blizzard hating on mages because its not. The change to warlocks, intended or not, is directly related to many complaints being made at the time.

I think it has more to do with their new policy of making all gear the same than anything else.

Home is where the hearth is
http://i16.tinypic.com/4pxlg14.gif
<The Conversation Killer>

Phizz

< Shockwave >

Ner'zhul

81. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:30:36 PM PDT

In my spare time I like to do world pvp and knock people off their mounts with this spec in storm peaks:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0VfzrczsGzGkZfV0fRR0uf

so you can't blame me if I am more outraged by the changes to fire than other people. >.>

[ Post edited by Phizz ]

Purr

Thrall

82. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:31:00 PM PDT

Q u o t e:

I think it has more to do with their new policy of making all gear the same than anything else.

it might, I didn't mean to make it sound like blizzard made the change because of all the complaining. What i meant was that the changes pretty much ended up addressing many of the complaints being made.

Caargon

< Validus >

Feathermoon

83. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:34:58 PM PDT

Q u o t e:

it might, I didn't mean to make it sound like blizzard made the change because of all the complaining. What i meant was that the changes pretty much ended up addressing many of the complaints being made.

If blizzard reverted a change every time there was significant public outcry we'd have never made it past 1.3. I know they don't give two damns about complaining at the end of the day. And yes, in a roundabout way it did kind of end up addressing that particular complaint. Though not, I imagine, in the way that everyone had hoped. I think that most casters, not just mages, would have been happy to see all spirit removed from all DPS cloth because... it's completely useless for DPS and even with the various spirit-to-damage conversions given to other classes, it's still significantly worse point for point than any true DPS stat.

Edit: So when you really think about it, this whole dint Blizzard's on about making everyone use the same gear for different things has done more to hurt caster damage scaling across the board than virtually anything else on record.

[ Post edited by Caargon ]

Home is where the hearth is
http://i16.tinypic.com/4pxlg14.gif
<The Conversation Killer>

Jpx

< Rampage >

Crushridge

84. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:36:11 PM PDT

Amazing post. Details all of the concerns and problems many mages have and are worried about.

We MUST keep this bumped in the event that a 'blue' comes by and actually decides to read it.

Phizz

< Shockwave >

Ner'zhul

85. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:36:19 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
Mage threads, regardless of how constructive they attempted to be, were always notorious for bringing other classes in to the discussion for comparison and they almost always ended up as nerf cry fests. I can't even begin to count the number of times I saw complaints about warlocks not needing spirit, not just from mages but from other casters as well. Blizzard forced spirit on to warlocks by making their spell damage and life tap spell scale with it.

Don't act like this is warlock favoritism or blizzard hating on mages because its not. The change to warlocks, intended or not, is directly related to many complaints being made at the time. These were complaints stemming from most of the caster community too, not just mages.

You are implicating that the reason blizzard made warlocks use spirit had anything to do with mages, which in fact, it did not. They didn't do it so warlocks would "suffer more" they did it to homogenize cloth gear. Hence, why they maintained an actual use for spirit.

I don't think there is any "favoritism" going on here though, you are the one implying it. God knows how many garbage posts I have read from others about how Kalgan does or does not play a mage.

Stop hating on mages as a whole because some mages are dumb. This happens to be a symptom of every class' community.

[ Post edited by Phizz ]

Thulazod

< Voracious >

Cenarius

86. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:43:17 PM PDT

They do occasionally reverse things like they did with the Improved talent tax in BC.

I think the answer is that they saw our crit scaling getting out of hand. So rather than rebalance content or gear, they nerfed the classes crit potential. The thought I'm sure is that eventually we'll catch back up with upgrades and begin scaling again.

The flaw is that it will hamper DPS to the point that a lot of mages won't play until the break even point let alone to where it's an actual buff. Add to that the problems in PvP and 5/10 man situations and you have a very flawed solution to making spirit useful. They can and should do better.

Astralic

< Pajama Party >

Shandris

87. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:47:47 PM PDT

Great list Phizz! Thanks for putting it together.
We won't get answers from Blizzard since we tend to get ignored, but at list we can express our dissatisfaction.

Can't wait to take my rightful place at the bottom of the DPS table again (Sarcasm)!

Caargon

< Validus >

Feathermoon

88. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:48:13 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
They do occasionally reverse things like they did with the Improved talent tax in BC.

They reversed the coefficient tax because mage scaling was completely in the gutter, not because mages cried a lot about that specifically (which they did.) It basically amounted to grabbing a beach pail and pitching water off the Titanic, but that's neither here nor there.

Q u o t e:

I think the answer is that they saw our crit scaling getting out of hand. So rather than rebalance content or gear, they nerfed the classes crit potential. The thought I'm sure is that eventually we'll catch back up with upgrades and begin scaling again.

Sure, 60-70% crit rate with full buffs and debuffs could present a serious scaling issue along the line. But if a (fire) mage needs such a colossal level of crit in order to compete with the other DPS, might that not indicate another much more fundamental problem with the spec? I mean we've all seen the parses where a mage's fireball/FFB crit hovers in the 45-55% range; His damage SUCKS. Like, sub-hybrid sucks. So now here we are, and all they've done is cut the head off of fire's damage potential without giving something to make up the difference, and preferably something that won't present a scaling issue in future tiers.

[ Post edited by Caargon ]

Home is where the hearth is
http://i16.tinypic.com/4pxlg14.gif
<The Conversation Killer>

Phizz

< Shockwave >

Ner'zhul

89. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:51:00 PM PDT

going to class hopefully more discussion & maybe even blue when I come back in like half an hour

la~

[ Post edited by Phizz ]

~# waffle gnome

People say arena measures skill. People say raiding measures skill.
I say achievement points measure how much more fun I can have in a game than you.

Ghostcrawler

Blizzard Poster

90. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:53:12 PM PDT

I can't answer all of these questions (or I will be here all day), but I can answer a few:

Q u o t e:
Why is the molten armor spirit change a nerf to pvp, solo, and anyone not in full 25man epics / raid buffs?

Realistically, most mages are never going to notice a change to crit while soloing unless it was a really large number. Soloing is generally not difficult and you are generally going to defeat everything you fight within a few GCDs. For PvP it is a nerf to those mages using Molten Armor, but very few mages use Molten Armor in PvP. If we like what the Molten Armor change does, then we might consider doing something similar to other mage armors down the road.

Q u o t e:
Why is spirit still significantly less valuable for us than warlocks? Why is it still better to use non spirit items except for in the few cases where the spirit item's ilevel was higher to begin with?

Apples to oranges. Agility is significantly less valuable to mages than it is to rogues. Yes, I realize you don't share gear with them, but if your concern is that warlocks will end up doing more damage as a result of that Spirit on their gear, we understand the concern and we think we have it under control.

Q u o t e:
Why was scorch singled out as too powerful when it is obvious there are other raid buffs just as powerful?

For starters, because characters already had very high crit numbers in the first tier of content. We aren't really trying to make all buffs equal at this stage. Sunder, for example, is still a huge damage multiplier for classes that do physical damage. But buffs that feel like they do swing the pendulum too far are good things to discuss on these forums.

Q u o t e:
Why do mages still have an archaic evocation tool that is risky and can virtually kill our dps like no other class has to deal with? Why can we be screwed over through rng because of this?

We understand the problem with Evocate in PvE. We aren't likely to turn it into Innervate, but we would like to come up with a solution that keeps you from getting boned when you happen to take a big blast of AE damage. I will also point out that there is a skill difference here too. Good mages know when the best time is to use Evocate (say KT just did a big blast so you know it isn't happening again). Less-skilled mages hit it the second they need it without paying attention to their surroundings.

Q u o t e:
Why do improved scorch and winter's chill still have no personal benefit? Why is it still a dps loss and the cost of a major glyph to make use of scorch? What is the point now that warlocks will apply the debuff with their main nuke?

Selfish benefits are something we would like to add to all talents. For those we haven't done yet, it is usually because we would have to nerf the tree somewhere else to make up for the inflated damage. One of the questions we often ask ourselves is whether a class would already take that talent just because it's such a good talent for them. For example, if Battle Shout was a talent, almost every warrior would still take it even if they knew 100% that another player could provide the buff in a group. Why? Because it still grants them so much damage when solo, in BGs, etc.

Q u o t e:
Why is frost still horribly lackluster in pve? Why is frostbolt still spammed and the ice lance glyph does nothing to fix this?

I suspect I don't need to explain this to mages, but we can't make Ice Lance any better without making Frost even more dealy in PvP. We talked about making the glyph better, and we still might, but the problem is most PvE Frost mages take the glyphs of Frostbolt, Molten Armor and Water Elemental already, *and* inflating the glyph to something like 8x damage would make Frost mages the most insane leveling spec in the world.

Ideally, yes, we would love to get Frost into PvE and Fire into PvP in a bigger way. In the grand scheme of things though, mages have Arcane, Fire and Frostfire specs doing very competitive dps with each other in PvE and Frost and possibly Arcane as viable in PvP. That's definitely an improvement over where the class has been historically, so while it is something we want to work on, it doesn't feel like a crisis.

Ghostcrawler

Blizzard Poster

91. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:53:18 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
Why has it been some five ptr builds with absolutely zero attention to our concerns? I promise GC, we aren't just complaining for the sake of it, and we're not all looking for massive damage buffs. Some of us would like to see our legitimate concerns at the very least commented upon.

Just understand that your concerns and our concerns are not always in perfect agreement. We like to get feedback from the community, but ultimately we don't sit down and say "How can we address all these problems that the community wants us to fix?" We have to do what we think is right for the game. Sometimes you are going to applaud those changes and sometimes you might not "approve" of the change.

I try and comment on what I can, but my time on the forums is limited. I tend to comment on things that are fresh in my mind from discussions the designers are having. If I answer 5 shaman posts and no mage posts in a given week, that is probably because we are working a lot on shamans at the moment. It really just makes the forums controversial when you argue about parity in responses or when yor why you "deserve" to have questions answered. Hence, I ask you not to do that. :)

[ Post edited by Ghostcrawler ]

Thulazod

< Voracious >

Cenarius

92. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:56:51 PM PDT

Q u o t e:

They reversed the coefficient tax because mage scaling was completely in the gutter, not because mages cried a lot about that specifically (which they did.) It basically amounted to grabbing a beach pail and pitching water off the Titanic, but that's neither here nor there.

We can't say for certain that the constant feedback and proof didn't help. Of course I can't say that it did either.

Q u o t e:

Sure, 60-70% crit rate with full buffs and debuffs could present a serious scaling issue along the line. But if a (fire) mage needs such a colossal level of crit in order to compete with the other DPS, might that not indicate another much more fundamental problem with the spec? I mean we've all seen the parses where a mage's fireball/FFB crit hovers in the 45-55% range; His damage SUCKS. Like, sub-hybrid sucks. So now here we are, and all they've done is cut the head off of fire's damage potential without giving something to make up the difference, and preferably something that won't present a scaling issue in future tiers.

I completely agree. I think the changes are horrible. I was just stating where I thought Blizzard's reasoning was. FFB for all practical purposes is completely dead with these changes. Fire/Arc will be significantly hampered, but will probably be the only spec with the longevity for 3.1 fights.

I'd love to see them add a personal benefit to scorch/WC that brought it back up to 10% (5% personal, 5% Raid). I'd love to see Molten Armor and it's glyph remain as is. If they want to do something with spirit add another buff or class ability that converts it to spell hit.

Frostvein

< Face on Fire >

Bloodscalp

93. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 02:59:51 PM PDT

Is it just me, or did that really not make anyone else feel any better?

Oh well. At least he answered some. Thanks for at least taking the time to read up on some of our concerns.

Edit. I can't type.

[ Post edited by Frostvein ]

"Regarding the mage class in TBC, mages weren't underpowered, they were top DPS in raids. Not to mention they were top DPS as any spec. You could come as frost, fire, or arcane and top the meter"

Xodok

< Random Inept Puggers >

Dragonmaw

94. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 03:00:25 PM PDT

And once again GC gave vague answers to straight-up questions =/

If I cared what you think of my gear/spec/rating/achievements I would post on an alt.

ARRRGHHH!! I"M CONJURING MANA STRUDELS!!!! AHHHH!

Eriseley

< Seaghyn >

Emerald Dream

95. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 03:01:48 PM PDT

You missed the most pressing part of the Molten Armor change, which isn't soloing but 5 and 10 mans. Unless those also don't matter? Are we now just going to balance around 25man, eventually just "extra challenge" 25-man, like pvp is just arena, and so what if a class kind of stinks in all other content?

And why is Flamestrike still argh? There are so many drawbacks to this spell yet is does basically nothing except a minor increase of aoe damage on trash if eeeeevvvverything goes perfect. Is that the permanent vision of the spell?

Using Clitter while pregnant may result in sparkle babies.

Onions

< Ninja Paper Boys >

Altar of Storms

96. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 03:02:33 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
For PvP it is a nerf to those mages using Molten Armor, but very few mages use Molten Armor in PvP.

Tearas

< Exodus >

Eitrigg

98. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 03:03:53 PM PDT

Q u o t e:

Just understand that your concerns and our concerns are not always in perfect agreement. We like to get feedback from the community, but ultimately we don't sit down and say "How can we address all these problems that the community wants us to fix?" We have to do what we think is right for the game. Sometimes you are going to applaud those changes and sometimes you might not "approve" of the change.

I try and comment on what I can, but my time on the forums is limited. I tend to comment on things that are fresh in my mind from discussions the designers are having. If I answer 5 shaman posts and no mage posts in a given week, that is probably because we are working a lot on shamans at the moment. It really just makes the forums controversial when you argue about parity in responses or when yor why you "deserve" to have questions answered. Hence, I ask you not to do that. :)

There is only one thing to do then!

Live streaming video from your discussion meetings!

That was a lot of answering to do, I hope you guys realize how much scrutiny goes into even 1 post to the public.

Give him numbers. He likes those.

Magiray

< Rocket Surgeons >

Executus

99. Re: [MAGE] We want an answer 03/19/2009 03:05:36 PM PDT

@GC: Accurate and concise answers.

I understand that if critical ratings soared from T7-T8 as they did from T6-T7, Hot Streak would be come ridiculously overpowered. As an Arcane Mage, I welcome the molten armor change, as it means my spec now scales with two stats. It solves any scaling fear the Sunwell-traumatized mages had. This was a good change, and a needed change that was very insightful. The smart mages will gear for spirit/haste with Arcane builds, and gain better regen along with the DPS stats necessary for the spec. The good players will gear properly, and adapt to the gear itemized in Ulduar, and come out solid in the end. (You will still see some nay-sayers, but I understand the reasoning behind this change.)

I am curious and concerned about the issues Fire/TTW and arcane have with mana at the moment. I'm also intrigued about the proposed Evocation changes.

On a balance note.. Conflageration is very overtuned. But that's for another discussion. Any chance on getting an answer to the mana concerns?

Forum > CLASS ROLES > DAMAGE DEALING