Why Mages Are Complaining
by Waterbottle | 30/10/2007 21:35:44 Disclaimer: This is not my mage. My mage's name is Adultralisk. Armory comments and personal attacks will be ignored as they are completely irrelevant to the point of this thread. Reason For Complaints (Skip if you are already aware and move to Suggestions) Many people, some mages included, are wondering what all the complaining is about for 2.3. They all see it as a buff for us. We were getting our coefficients back, the arcane tree was receiving a nice damage boost through the MSD change, and we were getting some slightly better mana regeneration for arena mages with the evocation tweak. There were a few other minor buffs here and there (ice barrier, frost ward, and fire ward getting buffed), but that was the gist of it. There were few mage complaints, and those who did were quickly put in their place. Then the following happened. Arcane Damage - The MSD was balanced with an inherent cooldown. Then the TLC was nerfed. Essentially, arcane mages are forced to tote around 2/5 tier 5 for the rest of their days and rely on items in the game to increase the effectiveness of one of their talent trees. As 2.3 rolls around and new tier sets are added, the 2/5 pieces of tier 5 will have to go at some point. Then the arcane mages will either have to deal with a seemingly flawed tree in the game or change their spec to fire to deal damage that is less than they were doing before. Increased Duration to Hypothermia - This nerf came out of left field. Since hypothermia was first introduced there were no more complaints about iceblock. Clever mages found ways to avoid dying for 30 seconds so they could use the second iceblock. However, it soon became apparent that Blizzard did not intend for the mage to use two iceblocks within a single fight at all. The increased duration to 45 seconds is absolutely impossible to work around. No mage will be able to survive that long if they are being actively focus fired in an arena. We have the fewest health, armor, no self healing, and one anti caster ability on a 24 second cooldown. At the same time, no other builds were made viable to compensate. The frost tree has been repeatedly hit with very substantial nerfs. Most have been dealt with fairly well, but this hypothermia change will break the tree and possibly frost PvP in arenas. There is simply no reason to bring a mage now as other classes perform a mage's assumed roles far better with better survivability. Mages lack mana efficiency, mobility, and lack any sort of ability to mitigate healing or heal themselves. Essentially, mages are not an attractive pick for a competetive arena team at this point in time. While seemingly minor in their own respective rights, these nerfs are the last of a long fuse line of issues building to a stick of dynamite. __________________________ Some Suggestions For Blizzard For starters, the arcane tree was never truly viable for anything until tier 5 came around. That set is pretty much a band aid for a spec that does not seem to have a purpose. It has so many lacking filler talents, such little survivability, and such high mana costs that it is made entirely undesirable for arena play. Its damage is now totally uncompetitive with that of any other DPS build and it has no added benefits like increased range, pushback reduction, etc. So we have fire for PvE, frost for PvP, and arcane for....what? This tree is in desperate need of some love. If it takes WotLK to do it, then that's fine, but the mage community just wants some acknowledgment that Blizzard understands how desperately this tree needs a fix instead of locked or deleted threads. Make other builds more arena-friendly. For quite some time mages have been pigeonholed into speccing deep frost in order to competetively PvP. We literally have no other options because iceblock is absolutely vital to our survival. Now that our PvP effectiveness is being severely compromised, we are left with no other possible options for a different build. Our mana efficiency is unattractive. Evocation is NOT an effective PvP regeneration spell. It not only requires you to stand still, but is interrupted by damage. Since mages will be focus fired first almost constantly now, evocation will be left unused in many situations. The cooldown is far too long for its effect. 8 minutes for 60% of a mana bar is rather lackluster. Place a talent into the arcane tree that lowers the cooldown significantly or allow evocation to work as a passive buff so the mage does not have to stand still for 8 seconds. Our mana gems are pretty bad. They have a chance to restore less mana than our lower rank. It should at least restore mana equal to the health stone's restoration. Increase the amount our highest ranked mana gem restores. Intellect value on items seems extremely low (and we're not the only class that thinks so). Since TBC release I have received a 150% increase on my total health. I have received a 25% increase on my mana. My instant cast spells have increased in cost by 50% at least. This very negatively affects caster classes in PvP. Casters are forced to sacrifice intellect in order to gain ridiculous amounts of health and resilience. In many cases a mage will not have enough mana left after fighting one decently geared and skilled opponent, and we cannot lifetap to get that mana back. We can restore 1340 mana with our gem while receiving one 1000 mana tick with evocation (in pvp) Then we're totally out of luck. Increase the intellect value on items. Intellect is what keeps a caster going. Without mana there is nothing a caster class can do. The disproportionate scaling of intellect vs. resilience and stamina has really placed a noticeable burden on playing a caster class in PvP and PvE. For Additional Suggestions - If you, the reader, require more elaboration on the points I have stated here, please refer to page 11 of this thread. Doctordeath has provided additional suggestions that are worth reading. Why Mages Are Complaining  Side Note I highly advise that no one attack CMs or developers or makes direct complaints about other classes if it can be avoided. This is meant to be a discussion of mage issues for the sake of the mage class. I encourage criticism, additional comments, and whatever else you have to say as long as it is concise and relevant. If you decide to post, try to add more than just /sign or /agree as a flow of conversation will be more likely to attract a blue response. Thank you for your time. That's all. Thanks for reading. [ Post edited by Waterbottle ] |
by Nethaera | 01/11/2007 16:22:56 I'm putting some blue on this thread, but please refrain from posting /signed in it. If you have an opinion, agree/disagree with what is in discussion, please say so. /signed doesn't tell us anything more and isn't constructive to the discussions at hand. |
by Nethaera | 01/11/2007 16:42:09
There are many people that have concerns about their viability in PvP and we take into account these concerns where we can but need to also keep in mind how any change will also affect PvE. The most I can say is that I can take the concerns about it to the team. The reason we say that /signed doesn't help is because we want to see more discussion to go with it. It helps gauge where the heart of a concern may be. It doesn't guarantee that we are going to make any changes based on that, but then again, it doesn't mean we aren't going to take it into consideration for changes that are yet to come either. Some people are concerned more for PvP, some for PvE and some for both. Some Raid, some don't as we well know from many discussions and "flame" wars we see on the forums about these topics. We like seeing discussion, what we don't like doing is promising anything we can't deliver on. |
by Nethaera | 01/11/2007 22:22:10
That's a really nice way of putting it, Lament. Thanks. :) " Everyone might like oranges, but what about them makes them the focus of that liking?", Is a nice analogy. While we understand that /signed means someone agrees, we want to know why someone agrees or doesn't agree even. It's also important to differentiate between someone just trolling for the sake of tipping the scales (so to speak) vs. genuinely liking the ideas and sentiments being put forth. Yes, I posted that I was bluing the thread, and the reason for that is so that it's easily found by other posters, by myself and by anyone else on the team that is looking for a place where there is a lot of focused and hopefully constructive discussion going on. If anyone read anything more into it than that, it wasn't intended as any other thing but a marker and a way to draw attention to it as a positive means of communication. Should you feel like you have feedback though, you can email to wowcmfeedback@blizzard.com It's true that they are read but it's also true that we do not send responses to them. Just know the feedback is taken into account. We have the email there specifically so that the community can let the management know if they like, don't like, or have suggestions for what we do. Thanks! |
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