Pallies Get Their Answer - Mages Waiting

Q u o t e:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=39414260&pageNo=1&sid=1#5

Tseric wrote:


Now that's a good answer. It explains the reasoning behind the change, and seems to make sense.

Sure beats "to maintain consistency"

Can Mages please get a real response like this.

You didn't ask a question, so I guess I'm going to have to throw out a response aimed at...something?

Threat reduction. This was nerfed because reducing threat is an easy method to dump tons of damage onto a creature. The total percentages prior to the overall reduction of threat wiping was too much. Arcane keeps it's threat reduction because this is generally a more mana-inefficient spell and will not be utilized as an all purpose nuke, like fireball or frostbolt.

DPS Testing - There will be some situations where a Warlock might out-DPS a Mage. This kind of competition can happen with a number of class combinations. However, this is a situational matter and the general standard will have Mages bringing more DPS to the table than most others. Some may call this 'on-paper theorizing' and not in game experience, but that isn't the case when data from tests can be compared to in game performance. The testing has been as extensive and exhaustive as they can make it and it does serve as a launching point of objectivity.

The Mages DPS potential is closer to the baseline than most of the other classes, which is to say, it is higher than most classes. And I'll be perfectly honest with you, Mages might be doing more DPS than the devs want.

Counterspell? - Global Cooldown, yeah I know. There really isn't more that I can say except that the devs wanted this attached to the spell. I won't bother trying to tell you nice or divert the issue. It is what it is.

Now...what else were we talking about? What is the day's fare?

Q u o t e:
Wait, I'm confused. Kalgan said that arcane nukes were going to be our highest DPS for the cost of DPM. Now AM is supposed to be more mana efficient than fire and frost?

Or does this have as much validity as doing stealth instance runs from the last Tseric post I saw?

edit: I've been 60 for weeks now and I'm no longer in that guild.

I didn't say AM was going to be mana efficient. I said the opposite. It can be a choice for damage, but it isn't going to be the choice you use all the time.

Q u o t e:


Tell the devs that this explanation is not good enough.

We want to know what about this change causes more balance to come into the game.

What is more balanced about being unable to CS any 1.5 second or faster casts?

What is more balanced about 1.5 seconds less of usefull CS time?

If it really is just because they "wanted" too, it sounds like the devs are purposefully skewing class balance in favor of the classes they like to play rather than create a fair playing environment and it should be returned to its former state.

You're right. I apologize. I am just not sure if I can elaborate much more.

Counterspell was always intended to be affected by the global cooldown, like so many other spells. Now, the reason wasn't a bug, per se, but matters of coding were involved. This issue did not have the priority, at the time, over other work and did not see the adjustment it needed. Therefore, it remained in game as a not-so-impactful issue and people got used to it's functionality.

What is happening now is that a lot of balance work and legacy work is going into expansion. By legacy, I mean going over long standing, low-priority issues to correct them. Expansion is the designers 'putting all their ducks in a row' and doing everything they can to balance all the minor elements they didn't get to before. The matter of consistency can be looked at from the internal angle more than the external one. Defining the GDC in this way and applying it to all of the abilities the devs wish it to prevents more inconsistencies from occurring when implementing future design. That may sound ironic to some and I assure you it is not lost on myself, but that is the way of this business.

I am also not pleased with having to say "They always wanted it that way.", but it is practically the long and short of it.

For what it's worth, I completely understand the reaction toward this. This is something you had grown accustomed to and it upsets a lot of conventional thinking for the class.

I will definitely state that there is growing concern over having increased the non-functional state of this spell. I will definitely mention the desire for a reversion. Beyond that, we shall see what transpires.

P.S. - This is the third time I've written this post. This time, I have copied it to clipboard. I blame the forums. :/