#0 - March 18, 2007, 9:20 p.m.
Here goes.
Concerns of the Mage Class
Bug fixes
- Blink - the obvious one. It's current status as 'being worked on' satisfies me, but I felt it couldn't be left off this list.
Arcane Missiles - Often fires 4 instead of the intended 5 missiles, also it takes Spell Interruption when you take damage with Ice Barrier active.
Water Elemental -
- -Pet Bar regularly doesn't show. I've had this occur many times without any mods installed.
-You cannot give the pet any commands until the global cooldown is finished.
-Spawns with 50-70% hp and mana, it often cannot cast for it's 45 second duration.
-If you fire off a spell while the AoE aim target for Freeze is active, your mage bugs and you're unable to cast until you hit escape.
-Freeze cannot overwrite Frost Nova.
-Entering Combat while the Elemental is on 'Stay' will cause it to become unresponsive and useless.
-Occasionally spawns as a non combat target - it does nothing and cannot be attacked by enemies, usually lives on past the mage's death when this occurs.
Arcane Brilliance II - Does not have the increased range that all party buffs received in an earlier patch.
Cold Snap - Still not 100% reliable.
Dragon's Breath -
- -Issues with applying snare spells while the target is affected by the disorientate, possibly not working vice versa.
-Flamethrowing does not increase it's range, which seems unfair since the frost equivalent increases the range on Cone of Cold and Frost Nova - the talent specifies a flat +3 yards per rank on all fire spells.
Evocation - not always ticking the last tick apparently.
Ice Barrier - Animation doesn't show if it is recast while Ice Barrier is active - the buff is still renewed though.
Invisibility - Breaks when a party-member switches Aura, sometimes doesn't remove player from combat, sometimes does nothing.
Molten Armour - lag based issue with it breaking sheep.
Improved Fireward - (occasionally?) on the reflection proc, it does 1 damage.
Spells
I think it's fair to say that Mages feel they got a bit of a raw deal with the new spells that came with the expansion. I won't neglect praise - Arcane Blast offers a multitude of new cycles offering very good DPM and DPS (at the cost of DPM) which makes it very versatile for boss fights, either very long ones or very short ones. Molten Armour is lovely and Ice Lance adds the little extra the frost tree really needed for PvP. Two gripes here from me though, perhaps more with some response on this thread.
- Spellsteal - The idea is awesome, but the way in which Blizz implemented it is all wrong. Because you have no prio list on what is stolen first, Bliz gave it no CD. But that has implications with very easily becoming overpowered. So you gave it a huge mana cost. That's effectively saying ''if you really want that buff you're gonna have to steal them all, which will also burn about 30-50% of your mana.'' I believe giving it some prio list would involve reworking the entire buff system, so I see how Blizzard is in a difficult position here. I still think you could more than half the mana cost and it still wouldn't be considered overpowered. Suggestions needed.
Spellsteal - overwrites buffs with a shorter duration version should you steal that spell - the spell should just act as a dispell in these situations? The same is true of overwriting stronger versions of the same buff with a weaker non talented version.
Invisibility - The potential for this is awesome. As Bliz said themselves, they're so scared of this being totally overpowered as it was in the original Beta (i wasn't there, I don't know what was different about it) they chose to give us the most basic version of it they could think of, with the intention of buffing it over time if they saw fit. Kalgan promised us that they knew it was a Nerfed spell that would be buffed later, to avoid overpower - please can we see some follow up on those promises?
Dampen & Amplify Magic - the very nature of these spells makes them largely useless - these could be buffed in general usefulness - removing the -heal factor on dampen, or perhaps allow us to cast these on enemies as well as friendly targets.
Mana Emerald is a very very low percentage of current mana pools compared to healthstones or what Mana Ruby did at level 60.
Arcane Blast - dispellable debuff? It's nothing major, just need to tell your priests/paladins not to waste their mana, but it's an issue that could be avoided. I can't think of a situation where it would be worth having it dispelled - by definition of the actual debuff, it shouldn't be a magic effect?
Detect Magic - a suggestion somewhere for it to become a buff (applicable to others too) that allows you to see buffs on given targets - though even if that were implemented I would still like to see the spell's current version remain intact - I like using it to reduce the effect of people trying to cleanse your debuffs.
Conjuring Water - some mages are still not content with the level 70 water, and want more, be it 20 per cast or a higher regen rate to fill big mana pools quicker. I think this is a very small, minority problem.
PvE
This is a bit of a large area to cover so I'm just going to generalise a lot - sorry.
- Raid usefulness - Most mages don't feel their damage output/utility is superior to warlocks or shadow priests to make them worth their slot seeing as in -for example- Karazhan Blizzard successfully managed to fill the place with Undead, and the only Humanoids and Beasts in there are conveniently immune to polymorph. Possible suggestions to solve this feeling of discontent:
- -remove our 10% dmg coefficient nerfs, or apply them to other classes 'improved' cast time talents
-give us some crowd control over Elemental mobs, leave the warlocks to demons
-amp magic applicable to enemies?
-some form of Manawell, Gems BoE or perhaps a Gemwell
-another buff - either in the forum of altered amp/damp magics, spreading of our Armours to becoming group wide buffs (though Ice armour would be a bit OP in arenas) or some other form of Aura
-delve more into the crit side of mages, capitalise on this feature of our class and expand it - a crit buff?
-better ways to dispell magic - either altering spellsteal to make it more viable for spamming or a flat dispell ability? I always felt priests should have decurse and mages dispell.. but that's the RP side of it ;P
-invis castable on others?
-making humanoids and beasts in Karazhan etc actually susceptible to polymorph
-delve into the world of DoTs for mages?
-Blink providing an aggro reduction component?
-Master of Elements giving a group power gain, similar to Vampiric Touch but for mage crits?
-Haste Buff, castable on other players? Suggested- 3 min CD, lasts 20 sec, haste increase of 33%, cannot stack with AP (for obvious reasons :P). Suggested figures only.
-Brilliance Aura, sticking to lore from WC3, party mana regen buff.
-Mage equivalent of Judgement of Wisdom, applicable debuff to restore small amounts of mana.
-Spell Damage Aura? Alternative to suggestions for a Mana Restoration aura or Crit aura. It could work off % of the mage's spelldamage. ''Increases all spell damage and healing done by party members by 10% of the mage's bonus spell damage.''
-Coupling Mages with Moonkins similar to the Warlock - Shadowpriest partnership, perhaps giving arcane Bonuses. Possibly based off crit chances, on-crit-procs, spell hastes and perhaps even clearcasting, to differ from the flat damage bonus of the Lock/SPriest combo.(A little redundant, since while I do see loads and loads of shadowpriests now, I don't see many moonkins. Personal point though.)
When a Blue poster responded to a concern thread before TBC, he said
Q u o t e:Our response was 'ah awesome!'. It seems Bliz even got scared of that outcome and applied nerfs accordingly, such that now most of us are struggling to get on top. What I think is causing the issue is Blizzards idea, and our idea of what's 'ok'. Being 'on par' isn't ok. We want to be on top. That's what we sacrificed survivability for. Not massively on top, just noticeably so, so much that we feel vaguely useful. Admittedly 10/48/3 is brutally effective.
in all of the testing we've done so far, the mage has been the clear-cut top damage class in the expansion at level 70, even against single targets (hopefully not too much so).
