Mage Ability Pruning See the Ability Pruning section for discussion of why we’re pruning class abilities. For Mages, we removed several of the unused and niche abilities from each specialization that didn’t use them primarily.•Arcane Barrage replaces Fire Blast for Arcane Mages.•Arcane Blasts cast time has been increased to 2.25 seconds (up from 2 seconds), damage has been increased by 12.5% to compensate, and replaces Frostfire Bolt for Arcane Mages.•Arcane Explosion is now available only to Arcane Mages.•Blizzard is now available only to Frost Mages.•Conjure Mana Gem has been removed.•Evocation is now available only to Arcane Mages.•Flamestrike is now available only to Fire Mages.•Ice Floes no longer has a restriction on base cast or channel times for spells (formerly only worked on spells with a base cast or channel time of less than 4 seconds).•Ice Lance replaces Fire Blast and is now only available to Frost Mages.•Pyromaniac has been removed.•Shatter is now available only to Frost Mages.•Mage Armor is now a passive effect and is available only to Arcane Mages.•Frost Armor is now a passive effect and is available only to Frost Mages.•Molten Armor is now a passive effect and is available only to Fire Mages. Ability Consolidation and Refinement Most of the Mage abilities required little consolidation. The most notable change here is turning Armor spells into passive abilities for each specialization.•Mage Armor is now a passive effect and is available only to Arcane Mages.•Frost Armor is now a passive effect and is available only to Frost Mages.•Molten Armor is now a passive effect and is available only to Fire Mages.•Combustions damage has been increased by 100%, but no longer deals direct damage or stuns, and replaces Deep Freeze for Fire Mages.•Ice Floes no longer has a restriction on base cast or channel times for spells (formerly only worked on spells with a base cast or channel time of less than 4 seconds).•Mirror Image is now a level-90 Talent, replacing Invocation. Mirror Images now inherit 50% of the Mage’s Spell Power (up from 5%).•Polymorph variants except for Polymorph: Sheep are now all learned as spells and grouped in a flyout on the Spellbook instead of being a Minor Glyph that alters the visuals of Polymorph: Sheep. Talent Revisions The Mage class has good specialization distinction when it comes to their single-target rotations, but utility and area-of-effect spells were heavily shared between specializations. Commonly, these spells were redundant as well. We made many of their spells specialization-specific (as described in Ability Pruning above). And probably most significant, we made changes to several existing Talents. Presence of Mind was extremely strong for instant crowd control (CC), which we wanted to curtail. Rather than completely remove Presence of Mind or make it not affect CC abilities, we made it a base Arcane spell, where we dont expect that it will be a problem, since Arcane has less CC than the other Mage specs already. In its place, weve added a new talent, Evanesce. It may seem out of place on a movement-focused talent row at first. In practice, we expect that the similarity will bear out as Mages use it instead of moving away from avoidable damage.•Alter Time is now a level-30 Talent, replacing Temporal Shield.•Evanesce is a new Talent available at level 15. •Evanesce causes the Mage to fade into the nether, avoiding all attacks for 3 seconds. This spell has a 45-second cooldown, replaces Ice Block, is not on global cooldown, and may be cast while a cast-time spell is in progress. Going along with our goals to reduce cooldown stacking across all of the classes, we decided to remove Alter Times DPS contribution. Alter Time has a number of clever movement and utility uses, but in practice it was mostly being used for additional uptime of offensive cooldowns. Mages also had many redundant forms of survival utility, so we moved a utility-only version of Alter Time into the Talent tree, replacing Temporal Shield.•Temporal Shield has been removed and replaced by Alter Time.•Alter Time is now a level-30 Talent, replacing Temporal Shield. •Alter Time now lasts for 15 seconds (up from 6 seconds), has a 90-second cooldown (down from 3 minutes), and no longer affects the Mage’s mana, buffs, or debuffs. A few of the abilities reset by Cold Snap were made spec-specific, or could be overridden with Talents, so we expanded what it can affect to compensate.•Cold Snap now also resets the cooldown of Presence of Mind, Dragons Breath, and Evanesce. The Mage Bomb level-75 Talent row, the Bomb row, was also problematic. We chose to add the Bombs to all Mages rotations in order to spice them up a bit, to provide rotational variety. That succeeded, and were overall happy with how they interact with your rotation in a single-target situation, but they also came with the prospect of multi-dotting (applying your damage-over-time spell to many enemies, individually), which we dont feel is an appropriate fit for Mages. Additionally, in order to make all 3 Bombs useful to all specializations, we had to lose some of their spec-specific perks. And, even more importantly, many Mages did not like DoT gameplay at all. In order to solve all of these problems, we decided to merge the 3 current Bomb Talents into one that changes based on spec. That allows us to reintroduce spec-specific perks to each Bomb, and makes room for some non-DoT alternatives.•Nether Tempest, Living Bomb, and Frost Bomb now all share the left-talent slot and is available based on the Mages specialization. •Frost Bomb has been redesigned. •Frost Bomb now lasts 12 seconds, has no cooldown, and explodes every time the target is hit by the Mages Ice Lance while frozen. The damage per explosion has been reduced by 75% to compensate.•Living Bomb can once again be applied to multiple targets, can be spread by Inferno Blast, and has a 1.5-second cooldown. More of its damage has been moved into its explosion.•Nether Tempest can now only be on 1 target at a time (down from unlimited), but its secondary damage now hits all targets in range (up from only 1), deals 100% of the primary damage (up from 50%), and its damage can now be increased by Arcane Charges.•Unstable Magic is a new Talent thats available at level 75, and occupies the middle-talent slot. •Unstable Magic causes Arcane Blast, Fireball, and Frostbolt have a chance to explode on impact, dealing an additional 50% damage to the target, and all other enemies within 8 yards.•The right-talent slot for level-75 has a new Talent that varies by specialization. •Blast Wave: Cause an explosion of fiery force around the target enemy or ally, dealing Fire damage to all enemies within 8 yards, and dazing them, reducing their movement speed by 70% for 4 seconds. If the primary target is an enemy, they take 100% increased damage. Replaces Frost Nova. Instant cast ability with a 25-second cooldown and 2 charges.•Ice Nova: Cause a whirl of icy wind around the target enemy or ally, dealing Frost damage to all enemies within 8 yards, and freezing them for 4 seconds. If the primary target is an enemy, they take 100% increased damage. Replaces Frost Nova. Instant cast ability with a 20-second cooldown and 2 charges.•Supernova: Cause a pulse of Arcane energy around the target enemy or ally, dealing Arcane damage to all enemies within 8 yards, and knocking them into the air. If the primary target is an enemy, they take 100% increased damage. Replaces Frost Nova. Instant cast ability with a 25-second cooldown and 2 charges. One of the most problematic Talent rows in the game has been the Mage level-90 row. The primary theme of the row was mana, which only Arcane Mages actually cared about. Bonus damage was added in, making it functional for all Mages, but muddled in its goals. Additionally, some of them just werent fun to play with. Weve revised the row to be purely about damage, and made them have less maintenance cost. Arcane Mages will have enough mana regeneration without these Talents to perform well.•Incanters Ward has been removed and replaced by Incanters Flow a new level-90 Talent. •Incanters Flow: Magical energy flows through you, increasing all spell damage done by 5% per stack. While in combat, the magical energy builds up to 5 stacks over 5 seconds and then diminishes down to 1 stack over 5 seconds. This cycle repeats every 10 seconds.•Invocation has been removed and replaced by Mirror Image.•Mirror Image is now a level-90 Talent, replacing Invocation. Mirror Images now inherit 50% of the Mage’s Spell Power (up from 5%). •Glyph of Mirror Image has been removed and its effects have been incorporated into Mirror Image.•Rune of Power no longer replaces Evocation, no longer increases mana regeneration, and now lasts 3 minutes (up from 1 minute). Frost Changes Frost Mages enjoyed newfound PvE viability in Mists of Pandaria, and we intend to continue that into the future. However, we do want to clean up some rough spots, especially around their valuing of secondary stats, and the amount of instant-cast spells in their rotation. The Frost Armor and Shatter changes increase the amount of Haste/Critical chance that they can acquire on gear before they start hitting soft caps. The Shatter change also lowers the value of Critical Strike for a bit. The changes to the level-75 Talent row meant that having a Bomb spell is no longer guaranteed, so we changed the way that Brain Freeze is triggered. Ice Lance’s non-frozen damage was doubled to make up for no longer having access to Fire Blast and reducing redundancy in the process. We also changed Brain Freezes effect, in order to give Frost mages another cast-time spell in their rotation.•Frost Armor now grants an 8% chance to Multistrike instead of 7% Haste.•Shatter now multiplies Critical Strike chance by 1.5 (down from 2).•The Brain Freeze effect now increases Frostfire Bolts damage by 25%, and can now stack up to 2 times instead of making Frostfire Bolt instant. It also no longer triggers from the Bomb Talents, and instead has a 10% chance to trigger from Frostbolt casts. Each Multistrike of Frostbolt increases that casts chance by an additional 45%. (Total of 100% on double-Multistrikes).•Ice Lance’s base damage has been increased by 100%, but its damage multiplier against frozen targets has been reduced by 50%.•Glyph of Frostfire Bolt is now available only to Fire Mages.•Glyph of Icy Veins now causes Icy Veins to provide 35% chance to Multistrike instead of 20% Haste. Fire Changes Rotation for Fire Mage is looking solid with the new Draenor Perks. However, their cooldown strength could use a buff.•Combustions damage has been increased by 100%, but no longer deals direct damage or stuns, and replaces Deep Freeze for Fire Mages. Arcane Changes In order to make room for more Haste effects to apply to Arcane Blast, we raised its cast time and damage slightly. We also made Arcane Charges last longer, to aid in questing and encounters.•Arcane Blasts cast time has been increased to 2.25 seconds (up from 2 seconds), damage has been increased by 12.5% to compensate, and replaces Frostfire Bolt for Arcane Mages.•Arcane Charges now last 15 seconds (up from 10 seconds).
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 02:02:23 +0000
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