3.3.3 Mage Changes - Blue Tracker

#0 - Feb. 19, 2010, 10:54 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Frostbolt: Spell power scaling on this spell has been increased by approximately 5%.

Does this simply mean that the coefficient penalty has been removed? That would mean an increase from about 81.43% to about 85.71%.

Q u o t e:
Arcane Empowerment: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc off of critical strikes. The self damage buff remains unchanged.

Presumably this means the mere presence of an Arcane Mage provides the damage buff aura. Interesting.

Q u o t e:
Incanter's Absorption: This talent now only grants additional spell power when damage is absorbed by Mana Shield, Frost Ward, Fire Ward, or Ice Barrier. The limit of 5% of the mage's health on the spell power buff has been removed.

That should moderate the talent quite a bit.

Q u o t e:
Burning Soul: Threat reduction is now 10/20%, up from 5/10%.

A useful change, putting Fire's threat reduction pretty much on par with Frost and all three Warlock specs. If Fire Mages find themselves to be threat-capped frequently, this could goose them up the meters a bit, but I'm not sure that's their problem on most encounters these days. Fire guys/gals will have to speak up on this one.

Q u o t e:
Brain Freeze: This talent now allows your next Fireball or Frostfire Bolt to be instant and cost no mana. There is a small internal cooldown to keep the Frostfire Bolt from immediately triggering Brain Freeze again.

That seems a very elegant solution. The DPS increase will be subtle, which is appropriate, and spacing out the procs a wee bit will not be at all problematic for us.

Very much looking forward to testing this out.

ETA:

Q u o t e:
Glyph of Fireball: No longer increases critical strike chance of Fireball. Instead, it now reduces the cast time of Fireball by 0.15 seconds.

That's a ~5.26% casting speed increase for Fireball. I think in a stand-up stationary fight, that's going to be pretty much a DPS-neutral change, but it may improve Fire's ability to handle most encounters.

Ghostcrawler

#192 - Feb. 24, 2010, 10:20 p.m.

The Combustion change was to let its cooldown line up better with e.g. trinket cooldowns. It just felt awkward at 3 min.

The Fireball glyph change was because some Fire mages were getting such absurdly high crit rates that even more crit wasn't attractive. We weren't trying to make this particular glyph ridiculously powerful.

The actual dps increases are something more like adding Pyroblast to Torment the Weak and Empowered Fire. That may have missed the most recent patch notes.

I would also expect Arcane damage to fall overall with the Incanter's Absorption change. (Torment is also gratuitously overpowered, but that would be too big a change for now.) That should get Fire a lot closer to Arcane. Getting Frost up there too is harder, but we're still trying.

[Also agree with the comment that too much "I feel ignored!!!" risks spoiling a good thread.]

Ghostcrawler

#286 - Feb. 25, 2010, 4:37 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I'm ecstatic to see a lead dev admit that TTW is a bad talent. Many mages won't realise it but that was the most exciting piece of news in his post.

It's not a terrible talent design per se. The number is just too big. If it was say 3-5% damage, then it might be a nice kit thing but a situational or even optional talent. At 12% any fight where a mage can't benefit from it is just really punishing to mages. (But as I said, we aren't going to nerf it any time soon.)

Ghostcrawler

#362 - Feb. 25, 2010, 4:48 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Even if it was 3-5%, every single mage would still spec for it unless the alternative spec, whatever that would be, was capable of more than 3-5% damage. That would make it so it wasn't a "kit" thing. I'm assuming our damage is balanced around it because we all have the talent and it's always up on a raid boss (we hope).

Let me put it this way:

The talent says: Your Frostbolt, Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Pyroblast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, and Arcane Barrage abilities deal 12% more damage to snared or slowed targets.

What players see: Your Frostbolt, Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Pyroblast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, and Arcane Barrage abilities deal 12% more damage at all times and if it ever doesn't provide 12% then Blizzard hates mages.

A better design: "Sometimes" your Your Frostbolt, Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Pyroblast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, and Arcane Barrage abilities deal 4% more damage.

Because the damage swing is so huge (12%!) we have to make sure it is always up. The kit of slowed targets might as well not exist. It could say "You deal more damage when in combat," or "You deal more damage when you target someone."

Because it's so overbudget, it can't be situational or mage dps swings enormously. Eclipse is in a similar boat. It's not a bad talent per se (in our minds - druids may disagree), but because the swing is so large, any time you don't benefit from it, your dps drops a ton.