Yeah…I said it. Nerfs, as if we were way overpowered. Here are the changes and you can count up the buffs vs nerfs.
Arcane Skills
- Arcane Blast changed. Each time you cast Arcane Blast, the damage is increased by 15% and mana cost is increased by 300%. (Previously 25% damage increase and 75% mana increase, but the 300% is most likely a typo and should be 30%)
- NERF! Gostcrawler replied to this on the boards saying that they didn’t want things to be AB spam all the time…so the main bread and butter of the arcane build gets numbers fiddled with to make you less likely to use it….please remind me, when did they do this to Frost?
- Arcane Brilliance now affects the whole raid.
- Fix…should have done that in the first place.
Arcane Talents
- Focus Magic (Tier 3) changed to – Increases the target’s chance to critically hit with all spells by 3%. When the target critically hits the caster’s chance to critically hit with spells is increased by 3% for 10 sec.
- Used to increase magic dmg by 150. %’s scale better so I suppose this is good…not sure what the Break even point is on it though.
- Improved Arcane Missles renamed Arcane Stability.
- …I’ll bet Blizzard held daily meetings debating on how crucial we change this naming…
- Arcane Stability (Tier 1) – Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Arcane Missiles and Arcane Blast by 20/40/60/80/100%.
- …how is this different then “Gives you a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles”? -**EDIT** because it affects Arcane Blast as well…dummy
Fire Skills
- Flamestrike mana cost reduced and is now a 2 sec cast. (Previously 3 sec cast)
- Buff
Frost Talents
- Fingers of Frost (Tier 8 ) now gives your Chill effects a 7/15% chance to grant you the Fingers of Frost effect. (Previously 5/10% chance on frost spells)
- Buff
- Frozen Core (Tier 5) now reduces damage taken by all spells. (Previously only affected fire and frost)
- Buff
- Shatter (Tier 4) is now 3 ranks. It increases the critical strike chance of all your spells against frozen targets by 17/34/50%. (Previously 5 ranks and increased by 10/20/30/40/50%)
- Buff
- Ice Shards (Tier 2) is now 3 ranks. It increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Frost spells by 33/66/100%. (Previously 5 ranks and increased by 20/40/60/80/100%)
- Buff
Mage Glyphs
- Glyph of Frostfire has been added – Increases the initial damage dealt by Frostfire Bolt by 2% and its critical strike chance by 2%.
- Meh…Frostfire has a Glyph now..thats cool I guess.
- Glyph of Remove Curse – Your Remove Curse spell also makes the target immune to all Curses for 4 sec. (Old – 6 sec)
- Nerf
- Glyph of Fireball – Increases the critical strike chance of Fireball by 5%, but removes the damage over time effect. (Old – Increases the initial damage dealt by Fireball by 5%, but removes the damage over time effect.)
- Nerf…Raw Dmg almost always > Crit
- Glyph of Improved Scorch – The Improved Scorch talent now generates 3 (Old – 5) applications of the Improved Scorch effect each time Scorch is cast.
- Nerf….senseless Nerf.
Ok so yeah…where’s the love for Arcane? Fire got a minor buff (and a glyph nerf), Frost got more talent points to spend and buffs… Why you hating on Arcane? And the changes to Arcane Blast are just absurd for the moment. Gostcrawler mentioned that the changes to Arcane Blast are probably not final but there has to be a better way…Making it less attractive to push twice in a row to this degree is just dumb. If you only want players to push it once, balance the cost/dmg and remove the “on next cast” ability’s of it. Simple. Why is it arcane (one of the 3 supposed dps trees) doesn’t have a solid bread and butter damage spell when Fire and Ice do? Its because Arcane has always been more of a support tree. You cast Fireballs and Frostbolts and take talents in Arcane to help those spells do more. Now that Blizzard is trying to make each tree viable for deep tree specs Arcane has a lot of catching up to do.
{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
Where is the love for anything? Mages damage currently scales very, very badly! They are last as dps even as Arcane. Now they’ll even be below the tanks. The only good thing is fingers of frost, and that has to be buffed to 25/50% if they want frost mages to do really good damage, currently.
@Aylii seriously…its almost hard to consider mages a DPS class anymore. What are we?
We’re not Tanks, Healers, Hybrids, or a Pet class….we’re a DPS class. We should have to honestly focus on not pulling agro via too DPS and getting one shotted. We should be glass cannons not glass cap guns. This is getting ridiculous.
@Aurdon
I wholeheartedly agree.
Did another naxx earlier as a mage after the changes. After being below the tanking prot warrior. I excused myself from the raid.
Ayliis last blog post..Warrior Changes in 8962
Tank DPS is overtuned right now, meaning Tanks are doing more damage than they really should.
honorshammers last blog post..The Drop That Won’t Drop
@honorshammer
Even if tank dps is overtuned, it still means mages will be dead last below everyone else.
@honorshammer yeah but I can’t help but wonder how something like that could happen (even in beta) without Mage DPS being completely ignored. I don’t mind Prot having more damage (for solo questing). I just hope Mage dps is due for a pass soon.
Arcane Stability is different because it now affects Arcane Blast as well as Arcane Missles.
@ Aylii
That’s weird, I’m pulling off 2000+ DPS on my level 70 Mage with the new talents and just self buffed. I gotta test out Naxx on my premade Mage I guess.
Tunas last blog post..WotLK: Build 8962 – 4 Extra Points for Frost
@Tuna your right…just saw that fixing now…
@tuna
Simple answer: Gear Scaling
I am doing Naxx with t6 level gear, + 1 odd blue that I picked up in heroic CoT. What was 2000 dps at 70 is now about 1300 at 80. The way we had a chance before, was stacking haste + crit and using arcane blast nonstop. Problem is now, we went oom, so that served as a dps cap for us. With the AB changes now, we have shit for damage. We need our damage scaled.
p.s. The other mage was in level 80 heroic blues, they only had 250 dps more than I.
but on the plus side, mirror image wasn’t touched this round.
: )
@Prelimar
Mirror image is annoying, since you can’t keep yourself from being switched.
I was quite pleasantly surprised this last patch, when I logged in, saw my talent points had been reset, and so respent them exactly as before, and found myself with 4 extra talent points.
Frost was seriously buffed this patch, which seems kinda ludicrous to me. Frost was already utterly dominating in PvP. So they made frost even better.
And then they nerfed Arcane into obscurity. Again. After it finally had managed to fight it’s way to a solid raiding spec, after years of being a “support” tree at best.
I hope Blizzard gets their act in gear here. As it stands now, arcane isn’t viable for anything, fire is like Arcane Blast is now (on live, I mean).
On the bright side, somebody over there really loves frost.
As an arcane mage, I applaud this change. So far Arcane DPS is just spamming Arcane Blast with 2 piece T5. If this change had not been made, having 2 piece T5 would have been an eternal requirement for arcane mages, because no two items will give you a 20% damage increase. That was absurd and needed to be fixed. And the way to fix it is to make AB-spam impossible, which they did.
THey have not yet done number optimisation, so DPS comparisons are rather moot. At this point it is about mechanics, spell rotations and ”’fun”’. I must say that doing an Arcane Blast-Arcane Barrage-Arcane Blast rotation with Arcane Missiles trown in when Missile Barrage procs and an occasional Fire Blast if your haste allows it will be much more fun than just spamming AB.
After damage normalisation at the end of the beta we should expect to do just slightly less DPS than melee DPS classes, but more than anyone else.
And to those lvl 80 mages crying about their low DPS. How much hit rating did you have? Hit rating to hit percentage conversion is dependant on your level (as well as mob’s level). According to calculations of Lhivera, you need 367 hit rating to be hit capped at level 80 against level 83 mobs (assuming +3% hit talents are used). If you used your T6 gear, then you were nowhere near the hit cap and that explains you horrible DPS.
@Aigars, I think arcane is my favorite spec of choice as well and while I haven’t played much of level 80 yet, I think they could have done better with this last change. If T5 is the issue, simply adjust the % down (which I believe they’ve already done). Hunter T5 is insanely good for BM spec and yet they aren’t messing with them.
I completely agree with you that AB spam is bad and the numbers aren’t finalized but at this point they should just rework the whole spell if they feel backed into a corner with it. If they want us to use other spells instead of just spamming arcane blast, then WHY THE HECK DID THE SHORTEN THE TIMER?!?!?!? We were using other spells in rotations just fine. They could have simply tuned the damage down a bit.
So now, we’ve taken a spell that might have only needed a damage adjustment, and messed with its core mechanics to a point where you never ever want to cast it back to back. So now they are looking for incentives to cast other spells. They put some fun procs in there to make it more interactive but the best way to get us to cast Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage to make their DPS comparable with Arcane Blast.
The best fix I can think of now is to tune the damage of the Arcane tree to match with Fire and Frost and they should adjust the other Arcane spells to be more desirable to cast (increasing DPS or more synergy with Arcane Blast then just Missile Barrage). This would help avoid huge deterrents like the current ludicrous cost of multiple casts of Arcane blast. To me the 300% mana cost seems like a really bad band aid.
OR
Just change the Arcane Blast timer back to where it was and take the damage down a bit. It was never sustainable for extended periods of time as it is now on live so why mess with it? It still would be a great spell to use frequently and weave in other arcane spells with the proc of Missile Barrage and waiting for the debuff to wear off.
@Aurdon
I agree on the timer. One message of “Blah blah not ready’ is enough to mess up your rotation. Also, the t5 change was done several patches ago.
p.s. Your post made sense.
Ayliis last blog post..Warrior Changes in 8962
A T6 mage can sustain AB spam for a looooong time. If you gem out with INT/SPI gems, get a shadow priest, a shaman and a spirit buff (in addition to wisdom and kings), with the T5 mage trinket and an alchemist trinket … You can AB-spam for longer than most BT fights last and sustain over 2000-2500 DPS doing that. You can manage your haste vs. your mana regen to adjust to the duration of the fight to give more DPS over shorter time or less DPS over a longer time, but still just AB-spam with 0 reactivity in the spell rotation.
@Aigars I certainly can not refute what you point out there. You seem to know a great deal more then I when it comes to end game gear and mage raiding. But going off of what you pointed out, I’m not entirely sure a lot of mages are able to experience that. While it is possible to sustain that kind of DPS it does take considerable effort from you and the raid makeup to ensure that it happens. When you calculate then number of mages who are able to pull off such a feat to the number of mages who simply play with an arcane build, I would wager the numbers vary greatly.
I myself would simply spam the hell out of AB for trash and then drink in between pulls. I didn’t have the gear to “cheat” on a boss like I would on trash. This new 300% increase mana cost change (which Ghostcrawler noted would be surprising if it were left at its current state) makes it hard to even want to play an arcane spec.
I do agree that the spell needs some work but in its current state, it would be like saying “Each time you cast Fireball, the casting time is increased by 1 sec” or “Each time you cast Frostbolt, its damage is reduced by 30%”. The cost of casting the spell largely outweighs the value of casting it multiple times. I can’t ever think of a situation where you would want to spam this spell to get the +damage out of it now. I tried it on my mage and I was oom after 6 back to back casts. So if the goal is to stop players from casting AB over and over…success, because I don’t want to use it at all. I’ll move on to a tree that does great damage and has cast able spells.
And keep on commenting! You’re comments give me lots to think about.
“ingers of Frost (Tier 8 ) now gives your Chill effects a 7/15% chance to grant you the Fingers of Frost effect. (Previously 5/10% chance on frost spells)
Buff”
Sorta kinda sometimes a buff. Not all frost spells have a chill effect. A certain instant comes to mind….
@Turtlespume Yes most all of the frost tree saw buffs in this build. I have heard it commented that that chill effect needs to be buffed more then that but I don’t have much experience with frost builds post 3.0.2
Sorry to comment on an old post, but some things to note:
1. Arcane Stability is the new name for Improved Arcane Missiles because it also affects Arcane Blast so it wouldn’t make sense.
2. 5% crit for fire is better than 5% dmg because 5% crit is more than a 5% increase in damage (unless you have 100% crit chance) and because fire has procs off of crits that improve dps and mana efficiency. Besides that, the crit dmg bonus for fire is more than 100% (with Incinerate and Burnout it is at 190% I believe). Unless I messed up with the math this is a buff.
3. Reducing pushback is different from a chance to avoid interruption because of the new spell pushback mechanic. You will only have 2 pushbacks, so reducing the amount pushed back reduces time lost (and damage in the case of Arcane Missiles). If you resist a pushback, then it doesn’t count so you can still have the 2 pushbacks for their full amounts. Reducing the amount of pushback is better than chance to avoid pushback. They are equivalent if you get it up to 100% (5 points), but very different if you only put 1 or 3 points into it.
4. Arcane Blast was nerfed, but they didn’t just nerf it, they changed the mechanic. Now instead of haste which also reduces mana efficiency they just increased damage. That means it allows for more spell haste without reducing its effectiveness because of the GCD or player latency (time in between spell casts). Also, you can consistently have one AB debuff on and if you start the cast and let it fall off, then you get the 15% more damage and have a 0% decrease in mana efficiency. With the haste effect, even if you don’t increase the mana cost, your mana per second increases. Just to reiterate, with the numbers I have run this is still a nerf to AB, but since it is changed mechanic it will slightly adjust the way good players use this spell.
MAGES – STORM THE BLIZZARD FORUMS AND COMPLAIN LOUDLY: http
It is obvious that Mages have been treated extremely poorly in this patch. Last night I “spoke” at length to a GM about this issue and the problems noted above. If we are to get any relief, all of us must “storm the forums” and complain. Loudly.
Consider these points: When we started WOW we got a booklet that made representations about the Mage Class – I reviewed that representation – Mages use magic in distructive and spectacular ways. In exchange for being at the top of the caster tree, we were given very poor health – clothies. We slogged leveling, died more often than most, but were valued and needed in instances, because of the high DPS and for our CC abilities. NO LONGER
As observed by others, we are now way out DPS’d by other classes, WITH INFERIOR GEAR! (Haven’t you gone from the top to the middle of your group DPS stats?)
Our CC is at best on a par with cc granted to other classes.
But, we still die a lot and have high repair bills.
More important – Why would a raid leader choose to bring a mage? Why would a group choose a Mage, when there are others who are stronger and now can out DPS us? Why should we have to be at the mercy of a particular raid makeup to function the way we did before the patch?
I believe that this patch is a more than a nerf – and Blizzard has been nerfing mages for some time – it completely turns its back on the “promises” Blizzard made to each of us about the Mage Class and our abilities when we signed up to play. And, they took our money while we leveled, and now have downgraded us to the point we are “written out of the game”.
If you are unhappy – let Blizzard know. Post in http://forum.worldofwarcraft.com or – Send an in game petition re: Destruction of the Mage Class. Alternately, you can stop banging your head against the wall, and stop paying Blizzard (stop playing – augh!). Please join me in protest.
@Adam83
No need to apologize. Old post or not there is always something to dissect!
1. Correct, I overlooked that when I originally posted and edited the post after Tuna pointed this out above.
2. Well, yes and no. That’s why I said “almost always”. Crit does definitely have perks with some talent builds and spell abilities but it usually falls lower down the line in importance. I’ve always felt +hit (till cap)>dmg>haste>crit. But that is just a general guide. Some will rank haste #2 and others will rank crit higher (in some fire builds). And even so…that’s when we’re talking PvE. PvP is resilience > Stam > dmg I believe.
3. I’ll give you that one. With the change in pushback avoiding just prolongs the inevitable.
4. Yes I still don’t like what they’ve done with it but it’s tolerable. Switching between that and Arcane Barrage I rarely ever have to stutter to avoid the second debuff from Arcane Blast. Then again that’s because I have very little haste gear. I can see with lots of haste stacking you might have to alter the rotation a bit more.
GREAT POINTS! I’m glad you commented on the post. It was well worth digging up!
@Melodia
I do agree that Mages still need adjusting. I don’t think it is to a point where I hate the class and will never play. I do enjoy my mage. I also see how other classes easily out DPS Mages during raids. This does make me sad. I’ve said it else where and I’ll say it again.
We are not a Tank class.
We are not a Healing class.
We are not a Pet class.
We are not a Hybrid class.
We are a DPS class. We should not be out DPSed by any other class with a different role.
The only class that should match our DPS is rogues. Potentially a warlock but that is only potentially. I believe they are more of a Pet class then DPS. I think an easy fix would be to adjust the Mages to have more self buffs. And these could easily be tweaked to avoid OP in PvP. Simply do more mechanics like Arcane Blast where the more you cast it the spell the higher your crit chance is or the higher your dmg. This could be a very small number (0.05%) to where the only real time it comes into play would be in boss fights. Doesn’t solve the problem of being out DPSed on trash but it’s a start.
I do agree with the power of posting on the Blizzard forums. Words of caution though, make sure your post is constructive and not simply ranting and complaining. Blizzard has been getting a lot more lax with the ban hammers and you will ALWAYS catch more flies with honey. Be specific and offer suggestions. Those are the posts that receive the most attention.
I dont really see the nerf in all this, I see it as change.. Concerning dps, or the other players in my guild all suck, or you guys are doing something wrong, I have to hold back trying not to overagro, making way more dps then the other ppl and mage with another spec… I really dont get how come you ppl complain :S Yes frost is a raid assist spec, yes arcane is cute but more a pvp spec, go fire and burn things down!
BC content my highest dps made was 2650. I wear 3 pieces of T6, some BT MH ZA gear and a few badge piece's.
2650 was on anetheron 2nd MH boss and not curator to be clear
Well in defense of these changes, Blizzard made these decisions based on what the endgame of level 80 would hold for us.
In BC content I still stand by my argument that mages equally geared with other classes can't out dps all classes in single target or AoE. I have a screenshot somewhere of one of our warlocks pushing 10k dps in MH where mages were around 8k….hunters were up near the top as well. Kings of aoe my foot.
Will this hold true in the end game of Wrath? Too early for me to really tell on that. I'm not there yet nor has it matured enough to get a good reading from others. Perhaps Mages are back on top of things but at the end of BC (patch 2.4 and 3.0.2) we were never gold medalist.
hehe i just think you all gotta suck
i've been playing wow for 3 months now, and im on top of all dmg meters already as a mage… if you cant be in top5 as a mage, either you suck or you got 6 mages in the raid
Wow…that's awesome. Glad you like the game and can make such judgments on others after only 3 months of playing. I'm sure you looked at the full scope of this original post as well as read every comment because this post was made four months before you started playing the game. This post was made in regards to a BETA build of the game you play now which was still being tuned to where it is today. It didn't even exist for the masses of mages that played the game at the time. If you dig back into official Blizzard posts you can find statements where they admit to other classes being far more over powered then mages.
Point is all this QQ was done in past and things have sense changed. I've thought about updating this post to remind people of how dated it is but then again I'd get to miss out on awesome, well informed, constructive comments like your's.
Uhm..This topic could be old. I am doing 3.4k dps as an Arcane Mage, well above the rest of my raid. I don't see a tank can out dps you. Maybe re-roll a healer. Do your server a good deed.
Yeah this topic is seven months old. Mage dps has been tuned up to a satisfactory level in my opinion.
All arcane mages stop crying. AB cost like 250 mana. And a fireball cost like 670 mana so its not that big diference when stacking AB 3 times or spamming fireballs.
Or just qq in your baby bed
I know this original post is from months ago, but had to reply…… The Arcane Blast debuff increases mana consumption by 200%, 400% and 600%. That is a huge mana consumption, even if you use Arcane Barrage to get rid of the debuff after three Arcane Blasts. I've raided as a fire mage and I'm raiding currently as an arcane mage. Arcane has a SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER mana consumption rate than fire ever did for me. With the right rotation you can cut down your mana costs, but as fire I NEVER had to factor in rotating my mana gem CD with my Evoc CD… but as arcane this is critical or you'll be left sitting there wanding the boss until one of your CDs is back up. So yes, casting a fireball vs arcane blast with the debuff stacked three times… huge difference. Not to mention, arcane blast's cost is a percentage of your base mana whereas Fireball is a set value, regardless of the size of your mana pool.
However, I will not QQ because I do a ton more dmg arcane than I ever did as fire
Well said
/agree with everything Jessica said
@Vashu – couldn't agree more. My fire mage STILL tops dps charts 80% of the time (sometimes a cheeky DK tank gets the better of me). Raiding at lvl 64 in Ramps and Blood whatever mostly and it's really rare I'll come below 2nd as long as the DKs aren't killing the mobs so fast that Living Bomb doesn't get a chance to do its job properly.
Get a good tank who doesn't kill em all TOO quickly but can hold aggro and you still do some pretty serious DPS as a fire mage. Just dot up all the trash mobs with living bomb, scorch as many as you can, flamestrike just as the living bombs go off and you're pretty much guaranteed to have a couple of hot streaks to pick off the very few survivors with pyroblast. Atm I'm lvl 64 and regularly getting over 1000 DPS. Get a couple of dks who kill too quick and this lowers to maybe 450, so massive difference!!
Single-target DPS, which I guess is the fire mage's staple diet has suffered a LOT but aoe using Living Bomb and Scorch still gets you some serious points.
Just realised how OLD this post is!! My apologies! Haha
You'd be surprised how often this post still gets comments lol. Look back on the dates when comments were posted and you'll see its still popular
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Even if the post is out of date, the comments never are out of date and always welcome
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