I'm pretty excited for the Cataclysm expansion, although i'm not too sure about where Blizzard is taking mages. There seems to be two different thoughts that have come out in the preview. Here's the link to the WoW site about mage changed for cataclysm (for now).
The new mage spells are the Flame Orb, Time Warp, and Wall of Fog. The Flame Orb spell looks like it can be a lot of fun, but seems to be mainly for heroics or other gimmicky uses. I look forward to casting this down the WSG tunnel while hordies try to run out. It would have to really do some damage to be usable in a raid encounter, as I imagine the cast time is pretty serious. Time Warp (mage heroism+movement speed increase) seems like part Blizzards plan to pseudo-homogenize raids, not that this is a bad thing. I like having heroism from another class, but the speed increase I find most interesting. It seems like a very useful talent/spell (hello defile, lol) but one that Blizzard will inevitably design encounters around. Wall of Fog, overtly a PVP skill, but I'm kinda disappointed that the level 85 spell is designed for PVP or for trash mobs in a raid to the annoyance of the raid leader and anyone tanking. On the PVP side of things, all I've heard from anyone else is how frost mages don't need another way to kite, blah, blah, blah. I can see having some serious fun with this spell, 10 second duration on a 30second CD? Yes please.
Blizzard is also changing some class mechanics and some abilities like Arcane missiles, Scorch, Wards, etc. They are making Arcane Missiles proc based? I'm not sure what this means, if it's not going to be castable without the proc? I think this is a huge mistake, making arcane less viable than fire. Scorch is going to buff fire damage for the mage (a guess on my part) in addition to the spell crit buff, which makes sense to me. They are removing frost/fire wards, amplify/dampen magic, and possible some other "situational spells" because Blizzard doesn't feel like they are used. I'm not sure where they came up with this thought, I use frost ward/fire ward all of the time in ICC. amplify magic gets used on two different encounters in ICC, double that of ToC or Ulduar. PVP is the same, so I'm not sure why those spells are being removed to be completely frank, maybe they needed the room in the spell book?
Mastery, Cataclysms cherry on top. I've got mixed feelings about the Mastery stat. I think mages are in a pretty good spot personally...two viable raid specs, a PVP spec that 90% of mages play (which doesn't take much skill to be really annoying to most classes). I don't see a reason to change them much at all. Mastery, as I understand it, is going to be another stat to balance around no matter what spec you choose to run. Arcane will be SP, Haste, Mastery; Fire will be SP, Crit, Mastery, etc. I get the feeling that mages will be alot like how Enhancement Shamans are currently, there max dps charts are more of a Sin wave instead of slopes. This means that, for example, you want to stack haste until 550, then stack AP until you get to 5000, then stack haste again until 700 and back to stacking AP. I feel like this is what Mastery is going to do to mages, which I feel is a bad thing for anyone gearing up. I don't find gearing up a mage very confusing at all, but I'm constantly amazed at the questions I get whispered all of the time, stuff that is easily researched. Another thing about mastery I'm confused about is the deep arcane mastery talent, Mana Adept. I'm confused. I'm very confused. As an arcane mage my mana usage is based on two minutes of button smashing, racing my mana pool to zero, evocating and then making that 60% last two minutes, BUT NOW because of the mastery talent, i do "significantly more damage at 100% mana than I would at 50%." This is rediculously counter-intuitive to an arcane mage. Ideally, the last two seconds of a fight, I should be finishing a cast leaving myself with zero mana.
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