IGN Mage Talents

[Guest]

I posted a quite lengthy reply on the Mage forums:

http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread. .... 55496&P=14

Thundgot claims that this is just a first incarnation and stuff can still be changed:

http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread. .... 156108&P=2

I wonder. :|

 

[Titch]

I was pretty underwhelmed by those changes. It would be nice to get a preview talent calculator to see exactly what could be done with all these extra talent points going spare, but since you will surely need the same 20 or 30 point pre-requisites to get the decent talents, you only get a choice from within the same tree anyway, so I'm not sure it will work out so great....

Frost seems to get the best deal - not much difference in damage output, but more options for control, and ice barrier cooldown changed to 30 secs would be a bit OP.... Shatter working for all trees is pretty good, but no good for teh fireh mage!

Arcane subtely seems to be majorly nerfed, only working on crits.

More information about Combustion and how often you can re-apply it might be interesting, but it looks like it still sucks, and arcane power got nerfed.... however, atm I haven't got a 31-point talent in any tree, and maybe I could afford one with the talent points I've freed up.

And possibly a *very heavy* crit build might be nice - with master of elements and the new arcane subtlety.. however, that is pretty hard to achieve.. also maybe with shatter? possibly a elementalist build?

Generally, though, I agree with Liandra.. it looks pretty sucky at the moment.

.... I might go copy and paste this in the wow forums, although I've never been convinced that the devs actually have any knowledge of what happens in europe at all

I like my hunter.... FD ftw!

 

[Ayu]

Here is my take on the Mage review:

http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread. .... post157107

8)

 

[Goeres]

Poor mages ;-( ..ahh well ..let's all hold hands togheter and pray they save all their "energy" on the shaman class ;0..nerf 1 class and overpower another. Sounds fair to me <3<3<3<3

 

[Ayu]

Poor mages ;-( ..ahh well ..let's all hold hands togheter and pray they save all their "energy" on the shaman class ;0..nerf 1 class and overpower another. Sounds fair to me <3<3<3<3

._.

 

[Zermo]

OMG! Horde! honor! Let's zerg it!

In other news I somehow predicted this would happen - I guess it was to be expected :|

 

[Joy]

Frost seems to get the best deal - not much difference in damage output, but more options for control, and ice barrier cooldown changed to 30 secs would be a bit OP.... Shatter working for all trees is pretty good, but no good for teh fireh mage!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't Shatter+Ignite be quite nasty?

1.11 Mage Talent calculator: http://wowhead.com/talent/

 

[Guest]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't Shatter+Ignite be quite nasty?

You are right, frost nova + blastwave = nice.

Blizzard have indeed made elementalist builds much better now. So much better that I guess people will skip Arcane completely now.

If you want to spec the new (nerfed) Arcane Power, you need to waste even more talents in useless crap than you already have to right now. Le suck.

But my main issue with all these talents is that they are STILL BLOODY BORING. Creativity used for these changes = 0/10.

"Ok guys, listen up! We're going to fix the Mage talents in the next few days. Arcane Explosion will be instant when trained, and Evocation will be a trainable spell too. Please make Fire/Frost builds better. Oh, you have until tomorrow, good luck!"

Meh :x

 

[Joy]

Another thing, last night I mentioned Crit builds now being viable because of the -50% threat modifier on Arcane Subtlety. I missed Crits getting bonus aggro, making my point somewhat moot.

But, a simple calculation shows it will likely be true after all:

Patch 1.10

Low damage gear
Frost Bolt hits for 600 = 600 threat. (1 * 600 = 600)
Frost Bolt crits for 900 = 1350 threat. (1.5 * 900 = 1350)

High damage gear
Frost Bolt hits for 900 = 900 threat.
Frost Bolt crits for 1350 = 2025 threat.

Patch 1.11

Low damage gear
Frost Bolt hits for 600 = 600 threat. (1 * 600 = 600)
Frost Bolt crits for 900 = 675 threat (0.75 * 900 = 675)

High damage gear
Frost Bolt hits for 900 = 900 threat.
Frost Bolt crits for 1350 = 1013 threat.

===

Note that critting for 900 will be quite a bit safer than hitting for 900.

Now, considering I doubt Blizzard planned for mages to get even more trouble shaking of aggro, I am pretty confident the changes are designed to work out like these calculations. This also balances out the absolute focus Mages have on +dmg gear, and it's something unique.

 

[Guest]

I like your idea of Flameform.. could look very cool

What about a de-aggro based around it, where you are consumed by your flames and rise from the ashes.. like a more impressive fade, can only be used while in Flameform....

 

[Guest]

Another thing, last night I mentioned Crit builds now being viable because of the -50% threat modifier on Arcane Subtlety.

Patch 1.11

Low damage gear
Frost Bolt hits for 600 = 600 threat. (1 * 600 = 600)
Frost Bolt crits for 900 = 675 threat (0.75 * 900 = 675)

High damage gear
Frost Bolt hits for 900 = 900 threat.
Frost Bolt crits for 1350 = 1013 threat.

Your calculation might be wrong though. It's always the question what Blizzard means when they say "50% reduction". It could be either 150% - 50% = 100%, or 150% * 50% = 75%. For now, it is unclear to me which of the two it actually is.

 

[Joy]

I read someone else stating your interpretation on the forum, and a reply (saves me typing).

Di, your Example B) is no more logical from the perspective of storage/calculation than my prediction for how it works. Remember, the statement is "cause 50% less threat". But a spell critical causes 100% threat per damage, not 200%. Thus, the statement implies that you will cause 0.5 threat per damage, not 0.75.

For evidence of this, look at the rogue/warrior DW spec talent. My offhand damage is increased by 50%, but it's still only 75% of my mainhand; why? Because offhand base damage is considered to be 100%, not 50%. So, 100% offhand + 50% offhand = 150% offhand. However, since offhand base damage is .5x as much, the end result is 75% damage from my offhand.

Similarly, a frost crit is 100% threat. If you generate 50% less threat, you're only generating 50% threat on that damage; or, exactly as much as a normal frostbolt would have generated.

 

[Guest]

I like your idea of Flameform.. could look very cool

What about a de-aggro based around it, where you are consumed by your flames and rise from the ashes.. like a more impressive fade, can only be used while in Flameform....

Wow the idea of fire form kicks ass, that would be a wicked animation and would certainly be much better in any shape or form than Combustion. Could just make it on a par with Shadow form to increase dmg or crit chance, permanently while in that form, and cause fire damage to those who strike you.

I think the new cooldown on Ice barrier and shatter now effecting all schools of magic are very nice and still make frost far more appealing, the high end fire talents still leave me somewhat unimpressed. Im looking forward to being novaed and trinket/pom pyro'ed, thats going to hurt so much.

The talents may not be what every one hoped for but i dont think they could make everyone happy, at least i think this allows for some more variety in builds, but nothing that really exciting.

 

[Titch]

I'm not sure which model of crit threat actually applies, but the last time I looked at that threat add-on, it didn't mention any modifier being applied when a spell crits.

I'm not sure how the arcane subtlety applies to ignite - the DoT applied when you crit.. presumably, it isn't affected.

@Joy: I hadn't seen a calculator before, so I wasn't sure how shatter could be specced with a fire build, and now I've had a look, I'm not convinced about speccing shatter whilst maintaining a decent build in other areas. Its a fair way down the frost tree and to get to it, you need to invest points in skills which are generally much more effective when combined with other complimentary frost talents. A fire/arcane build with shatter and the pre-reqs looks naff in comparison. I like my PoM! (especially if I've put 3 points in improved flamestrike to get the blastwave skill)

However, that talent calculator is nice, and I'm finding that there does seem to be a lot more "possibly viable" builds to investigate than 1.10, so I guess that's an improvement

 

[Titch]

I had a play around with that calculator.. starting with my current build (see sig) I tried to see how these new trees could help me whilst trying to remain close to what I already heave:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?oG0gxRzZVgRcMcub
Too much of the arcane tree is "filler" (just to get PoM) for my liking

Then I thought about the best build I could come up with that took advantage of shatter:
[Edit: I suck.. see below]
Bye-bye PoM.... that hurts the most, the rest of the arcane tree is mana effeciaency, so I don't mind losing that if master of elements works out.
Also, I could move a point from master of elements or improved scorch into combustion, but combustion doesn't seem such a great skill if you already have shatter.

 

[Joy]

I had a play around with that calculator.. starting with my current build (see sig) I tried to see how these new trees could help me whilst trying to remain close to what I already heave:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?oG0gxRzZVgRcMcub
Too much of the arcane tree is "filler" (just to get PoM) for my liking

Then I thought about the best build I could come up with that took advantage of shatter:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?khZVgRcMcuxfVf00z
Bye-bye PoM.... that hurts the most, the rest of the arcane tree is mana effeciaency, so I don't mind losing that if master of elements works out.
Also, I could move a point from master of elements or improved scorch into combustion, but combustion doesn't seem such a great skill if you already have shatter.

But now you only have 1 point in Shatter, wouldn't it be more useful to go all the way if you do go that far? And get 5 pts?

 

[Titch]

But now you only have 1 point in Shatter, wouldn't it be more useful to go all the way if you do go that far? And get 5 pts?

Oops.. firefox doesn't like this page, and I messed up when I re-did it in IE..

This would be more like it:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?RhZVtRczcuhfVf00V

However, it's not great, cos:
3 points in improved frostbolt are filler to get the next line of talents. I hate wasting talent points!

To make better use of all those points in the frost tree, I could:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?RhZVgRczMzZiVfh0Vo

Which makes me kinda elementalist.... which I'm kinda undecided about. I think I would be thinking about all the fire taent points that are going to waste when I'm spamming frostbolts, and thinking about all the frost talent points going to waste when I'm spamming scorch.... But I do get ice block back !

This is getting trickier than I thought.. I think thats a good sign

 

[Ayu]

Wait, you consider points in Frostbolt filler?

You do realize how powerul a 0.5 sec on a snare spell is, do you? As much as I hate Elementalist builds in 1.10, I considered going 25/21/5 just for imp. Fbolt. But in return I would have lost 10% overall damage which just wasn't worth it

 

[Titch]

Wait, you consider points in Frostbolt filler?

Um.. yeah.. sort of.

You do realize how powerul a 0.5 sec on a snare spell is, do you? As much as I hate Elementalist builds in 1.10, I considered going 25/21/5 just for imp. Fbolt. But in return I would have lost 10% overall damage which just wasn't worth it

Exactly
In 1.10, 5 talent points in frostbolt to get the snare just wouldn't be worth it for my fire build. At the moment I never use the frostbolt snare. I can get by fine with nova and impact whilst using my fire dps to kill stuff. For PvP it is more useful, but I'd still use it so infrequently that I wouldn't find it worthwhile.

In 1.11, its still not worth it unless you are complimenting it with other frost talents, imo - hence the second attempt at a more frost-heavy talent build.

 

[Balduran]

Bugged link :<