Mages
* Frostbolt: Spell power scaling on this spell has been increased by approximately 5%.
* Talents
o Arcane
+ Arcane Empowerment: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc off of critical strikes. The self damage buff remains unchanged.
+ 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.
o Fire
+ Burning Soul: Threat reduction is now 10/20%, up from 5/10%.
o Frost
+ 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.
Ok, so not all mages, but arcane mages specifically.
+ 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.
Yeah, that part. The Incanter's Absorption nerf. So currently, this amazing talent will allow a mage a gain in spell power whenever any sort of shield or ward absorbed damage. There's also a limit on how much it will allow. This was amazing if you had a disc priest in your raid who liked you enough to keep you bubbled or in certain fights like Twin Valks in TOC. I've done 12k damage on that fight alone while having this talent maxed out. Unfortunately, with the nerf, Blizzard is taking a limited damage buff and making it even more limited from the look of it.
Let's look at the changes:
- The changes in the actual absorb will be limited with the new talent. Instead of any type of absorb from any type of shield, now only the mage's own absorbs will apply. So that means the absorbs from priest/paladin bubbles as well as magic absorbs from the light/dark auras in Twin Valks. The available absorbs for mages are Mana Shield, Frost/Fire Ward, and Ice Barrier. Mana Shield is fine, except it subtracts from your mana when you absorb damage. Frost/Fire Ward are short cast spells, lasting only 30 seconds with a 30 second shared cooldown. They also have limited absorb amounts that end up being less than PWS. Ice Barrier is a great spell, but it requires you to go a ways into the Frost Tree, so while this is still viable for two tree-ed mages who don't go deep in either tree, it's not really viable for a mage deep in either tree -- both talents are on the 7th tier in their prospective tree.
- The second change is the removal of the health limitation. This is great! Accept it's basically a moot point. My mage has 18,463 unbuffed health. Currently the SP buff from my IA can't exceed 5% of that or 923 spellpower. Max rank PWS has an absorb limit of 2230 damage. Assuming you took that all in one hit, you'd get a buff of 334 SP (fully talented IA) for 10 seconds. These little buffs do stack so after three such hits if your priest has the talent to put up the shield again in 4 seconds. So you could keep stacking them up to 3 times in theory before the limit was reached. For the sake of being thorough, with Ice Barrier's absorb up to 3300 you could get 495 spell power with a one minute cooldown, excluding Cold Snap. Mana shield absorbs up to 1330 damage, so 199 spell power. Frost/Fire Ward absorbs 1950 damage, so 292 spell power. With the cooldowns on the available spells with this nerf, it would be difficult to reach the health limit anyway without rolling all the cooldowns one after another. I can certainly see why they put the limit in before since mages were soloing Naxx with it, and I can understand why they're taking it away now since it doesn't matter.
So Blizzard, I say to you "Fix Fire First, Then Nerf." Kthx.
29 comments:
Fixed.
<3
Eh, that nerf seems silly. You get a passive buff from the talents from your own shields, and yeah if you have a disc priest it's excellent, but how many raids have a permanent disc priest (or an awesome holy pally /humble) to make this 'overpowered'?
Yyss is now barely edging out Iomadach on the meters, and on certain fights, Io gets the edge with enough ArPen or Sunders. An equally geared pure DPS class should never lag behind a hybrid.
Agreed. Apparently one of the big Blizzard guy's wives is a warlock and a hunter player. And warlocks just got fixed and look how OP hunters are, especially with all the physical buff classes we have in our 25 mans. Miffs me. Just you wait till I get my ele shaman in there. Then you huntards will pay.
To be fair, I raid with an arcane mage in our guild and we have our lovely dps duels, but the fact that he can do about 40k arcane blast crits constantly kinda makes me raise an eyebrow. Yes i know my hunter is overpowered too, but 40k? I'm leveling a mage myself atm, arcane, and am baffled by the damage I do. If my hunter could pull off that damage no one would even come near me on the damage meters. However i do see your point and probably blizzard just thought the talent to be too overpowered? Or maybe they thought it would rather suit a pvp specc?
I don't know, fact remains that it's getting "fixed" as blizzard says and there's nothing you can do about it really.
@Pieces - This is true. I whine and bitch occasionally. I realize mages can get some hot numbers out there, but the problem lies in the fact that unless they have serious haste stacked, they have to stand still to do it. Arcane Blast is a 2.5 second cast time and it doesn't take too long for the stacks to drop off - after 6 seconds. In movement intensive fights, this sucks. Taking a few factors into account (my computer sucks so sometimes I'm raiding at 5 FPS, also I'm sometimes slow to move) when I have to move out of something I often lose my stacks. Now for dueling, it's likely that a mage is just going to stand there and rev up stacks. Also your friend must have really good gear and I hate him by default. Our best geared mage hits 25-30k hits with 4 piece tier 10, a Reign of the Dead, and all his cooldowns.
I think our mage has about well a lot of haste, a really hell of a lot of haste so I dunno if that's why he can pull it off.
I know how easy it is to los stacks of arcane blast (damn you hasteless 73 mage alt :<) but yeah, blizzard will probably have had their reasons. It's a miracle they haven't touched hunters yet (hope they're not going to either :P)
Oh and Sandrinamage = Pieces... Dunno WHY the stupid thing won't name it pieces now o.O
Fire is sortafixed?
Yay :D
+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.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23329213396&pageNo=10&sid=1#192
Power Word: Shield actually absorbs a LOT more than that, and so do your wards; they all scale to spellpower. My Power Word: Shield absorbs ~8k. And my heal gear is "bad" for ICC. However, it's also impossible to recast it in 4 seconds as you mentioned, it can only go up at most every 15 seconds on any given target.
That said, I'm confused they're nerfing it, since only about half of the mages I meet even took the talent.
/care
QQ moar please, mages have been in need of a nerf for a while now, let's hope it is the first of many.
Why nerf mages and not the ridiculously overpowered rogues? Even with the nerfbat that hit rogues a while ago, they are still top dps by far.
So let me get this straight, you guys can pull anywhere more than 5k dps by pressing one button easy,and you are now crying because blizz is taking your edge off.really nice,you know i think the pally forums are recruiting
It's more complicated than just one button. Someone that can say that has obviously never played a mage :(. I'm not saying our rotation is the most complicated out there, but it's definitely not as simple as you're making it out to be. At first I thought this wouldn't be a big deal, but after seeing the numbers I know I'm wrong. I havn't seen any mage love from Blizz for a long time, and now they're nerfing us. This seriously hampers my ICC ability... Gypsy is correct. Mages have to stand still to be any sort of useful. This talent used to keep me a little ahead of the game on sp until the fight wound down (or once it speeds up). Now I'm going to have to burn mana just to stay alive. I kinda wish they would've made ice block count towards the talent though...but that would be op. Imagine, hunter diverts attention to me, I ice block, take tons and tons of damage, then tank steals boss back and I unload with an ungodly amount of damage. Rinse/repeat. *sigh* Wishful thinking
i always find it funny how another class trolls
on a different class to say about time you get nerfed what bull i have both a mage and rogue
and there is more involved in playing a mage compared to a rogue stand on the boss ass and roll face on keyboard rogue run allover the place trying to get a 2 second cast off for mage
trying to time evocation between raid damage or finding the time to stand still long enough to regen mana to get a chance to fire off a 2 second cast
Jesus H. Christ. If you're going to write a blog please get a spell checker.
I think this nerf was needed because it made arcane mages too swingy in damage. Friendly priest nearby and some raiddamage to be taken? Easy to top the meters. No damage or no disc priests? Not so easy...
This is too bad. My main is a mage, and I have to work hard to keep my dps up given all of the movement in ICC. Locks needed the last round of buffs they got. Hunters and rogues are ahead, and that's fine. I don't see why Blizzard is taking away the few times where mages get to shine. Now we're permanently relegated to being a stepchild.
I play an arcane mage too, and honestly it makes sense. A mechanic that is, mostly, based on an ability of another class (pw:s) that may or may not be in the raid makes us a nightmare to balance. What does piss me off, are the rumors that the absorbs from Frost Warding do not trigger IA anymore. THAT, to me, is uncalled for, and unnecessary.
As a fire mage - raiding ICC as well, i would disagree only with one aspect of the post. Fire IS a valid spec. I generally do about 7-8k dps on most fights - out damaging most arc mages. Strangely enough i just cannot get arc to work for me (i do about 5-6k dps as arc)
The extra threat reduction will be greatly appreciated, although i feel for all my fellow arc mages in their time of being hit by the nurf bat.
I know someplace you DO see a lot of Disc Priests-PVP. Nerf suddenly makes sense-other than the unfortunate PVEers who suffer for it.
My power word shield absorbs much more than that. It scales with spellpower. About 10k damage is closer to the truth.
(Not that it matters, since its wont work with IA anymore...)
As someone who does have an arcane mage, your rotation is simple relative to a number of other classes (and frost). Getting the last drops of dps out of it may be harder than the first 90% (and increasing your endurance). I wish that arcane was harder, but as of right now it is almost (beyond?) ret pally levels of easy. There is a great deal of flexability, and the spec doesn't have the massive loss in dps for target switching that moonkin (for example) have.
Well that was unexpected and amusing!
Atleast we can be happy that they're telling us about this nerf and placing it in a patch, unlike when they nerfed Arcane Barrage. And because they keep making these 'on the fly' fights, The should revamp Arcane Barrage. I'm not saying that it should be as OP as it was, but as is now, the spell is barely better than Fire Blast. Which doesn't make much sence for an end talent tree spell.
Your knowledge of PW:S is a bit flawed. Max rank PW:S absorbs around 8k damage - it's boosted by talents and has a generous SP coefficient. Also, you can only get one every 15s, but in any case, one shield fully absorbed should get you close to the present limit.
In any case, this talent needs to be shot, because it makes Mage DPS extremely variable. If Arcane DPS were too low on fights without raid damage, it'd be hard for the devs to buff it, because it would put them through the roof on fights with raid damage. Keeping all fights vaguely in the same ballpark makes it much easier to tweak.
um this isnt actualy a nerf for me its a buff i didnt have Incanter's Absorption any way cause i didnt relise it was anybubble but any way i dont know many mages with this and yes if u had it it would be a pritty major nerf but for mages wit out 3% extra damage constantaly is a buff
IF you're a raiding Arcane mage without Incanter's Absorption, you're gimping yourself. The extra damage from the talent is the only reason mages can currently compete with other pure DPS classes.
That 3% buff is also supplied by a Ret Pally so chances are you had it in your raid buffs anyway.
Thank you, priests for the extra info on PW:S. I haven't played a Disc priest since Old World, so my info is a little rusty and what I can pull off Wowhead, so base numbers.
To those of you who made QQ accusations, It's my blog. There's also a tag for Bitching in there. Also you don't have to read it. Arcane is not about two buttons. It's about situations, timing, and using your cooldowns and your procs. Mages who do a rotation and don't pay attention to that other stuff are cheating themselves out of DPS.
Also, Fire mages - You rock for running against the grain. I am not so brave. Plus I'm really a frost junkie and wish that was more viable. However, I've seen a fairly good mage raid fire in ICC - he switches back and forth and does more DPS as arcane, swears it's more viable. I mostly would like the choice.
I am personally a little more annoyed that Tom Chilton thinks that Warlocks 'could use more DPS'. Frankly, the fact that Warlocks can 'dot dot dot' tab 'dot dot dot' tab 'dot dot dot' and that they can continue to apply their damage on the run (I know Destro can't, but they're still far more movement-friendly than -any- mage) has put me way at the back of the pack for DPSing. The fact that they can have their Corruption ticks roll crit, etc...
It has gotten to the point where I've actually considered going back to the warlock I had in BC and leveling and gearing her up. It's infuriating. I don't want to -top- them all time, but I'd like to feel competitive with the other pure DPS specs. I know I have a lot of room to improve my skill as well--but I'm talking about people whom I am on an equal skill level with--we've all been playing the same amount of time, roughly, and have been playing together for that amount of time.
I am Arcane, but I was also Arcane way before it was 'cool'--I'm pretty comfortable with the spec and I don't intend to change (I don't like how Fire feels, and while I do like Frost, I'd hate to fall even further behind in DPS--our guild is good, but not so good that we're just blowing everything up.)
this poste goess to the engrish teachher a crying about spalling isa sorie my spalling bugeded use got a fn life
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