It seems blizz has been posting in the MAGE EU forum, and the Damage Dealing US forum. Not a single blue post in quite a while in MAGE US forum, go figure.
This is the doozy [MAGE] We want an answer
I can't answer all of these questions (or I will be here all day), but I can answer a few:
Q u o t e:
Why is the molten armor spirit change a nerf to pvp, solo, and anyone not in full 25man epics / raid buffs?
Realistically, most mages are never going to notice a change to crit while soloing unless it was a really large number. Soloing is generally not difficult and you are generally going to defeat everything you fight within a few GCDs. For PvP it is a nerf to those mages using Molten Armor, but very few mages use Molten Armor in PvP. If we like what the Molten Armor change does, then we might consider doing something similar to other mage armors down the road.
Q u o t e:
Why is spirit still significantly less valuable for us than warlocks? Why is it still better to use non spirit items except for in the few cases where the spirit item's ilevel was higher to begin with?
Apples to oranges. Agility is significantly less valuable to mages than it is to rogues. Yes, I realize you don't share gear with them, but if your concern is that warlocks will end up doing more damage as a result of that Spirit on their gear, we understand the concern and we think we have it under control.
Q u o t e:
Why was scorch singled out as too powerful when it is obvious there are other raid buffs just as powerful?
For starters, because characters already had very high crit numbers in the first tier of content. We aren't really trying to make all buffs equal at this stage. Sunder, for example, is still a huge damage multiplier for classes that do physical damage. But buffs that feel like they do swing the pendulum too far are good things to discuss on these forums.
Q u o t e:
Why do mages still have an archaic evocation tool that is risky and can virtually kill our dps like no other class has to deal with? Why can we be screwed over through rng because of this?
We understand the problem with Evocate in PvE. We aren't likely to turn it into Innervate, but we would like to come up with a solution that keeps you from getting boned when you happen to take a big blast of AE damage. I will also point out that there is a skill difference here too. Good mages know when the best time is to use Evocate (say KT just did a big blast so you know it isn't happening again). Less-skilled mages hit it the second they need it without paying attention to their surroundings.
Q u o t e:
Why do improved scorch and winter's chill still have no personal benefit? Why is it still a dps loss and the cost of a major glyph to make use of scorch? What is the point now that warlocks will apply the debuff with their main nuke?
Selfish benefits are something we would like to add to all talents. For those we haven't done yet, it is usually because we would have to nerf the tree somewhere else to make up for the inflated damage. One of the questions we often ask ourselves is whether a class would already take that talent just because it's such a good talent for them. For example, if Battle Shout was a talent, almost every warrior would still take it even if they knew 100% that another player could provide the buff in a group. Why? Because it still grants them so much damage when solo, in BGs, etc.
Q u o t e:
Why is frost still horribly lackluster in pve? Why is frostbolt still spammed and the ice lance glyph does nothing to fix this?
I suspect I don't need to explain this to mages, but we can't make Ice Lance any better without making Frost even more dealy in PvP. We talked about making the glyph better, and we still might, but the problem is most PvE Frost mages take the glyphs of Frostbolt, Molten Armor and Water Elemental already, *and* inflating the glyph to something like 8x damage would make Frost mages the most insane leveling spec in the world.
Ideally, yes, we would love to get Frost into PvE and Fire into PvP in a bigger way. In the grand scheme of things though, mages have Arcane, Fire and Frostfire specs doing very competitive dps with each other in PvE and Frost and possibly Arcane as viable in PvP. That's definitely an improvement over where the class has been historically, so while it is something we want to work on, it doesn't feel like a crisis.
Q u o t e:
Why has it been some five ptr builds with absolutely zero attention to our concerns? I promise GC, we aren't just complaining for the sake of it, and we're not all looking for massive damage buffs. Some of us would like to see our legitimate concerns at the very least commented upon.
Just understand that your concerns and our concerns are not always in perfect agreement. We like to get feedback from the community, but ultimately we don't sit down and say "How can we address all these problems that the community wants us to fix?" We have to do what we think is right for the game. Sometimes you are going to applaud those changes and sometimes you might not "approve" of the change.
I try and comment on what I can, but my time on the forums is limited. I tend to comment on things that are fresh in my mind from discussions the designers are having. If I answer 5 shaman posts and no mage posts in a given week, that is probably because we are working a lot on shamans at the moment. It really just makes the forums controversial when you argue about parity in responses or when yor why you "deserve" to have questions answered. Hence, I ask you not to do that. :)
I found a few of the comments quite disturbing. Such as assuming no mages use molten armor in pvp. Overall, Im glad they are at least looking at us.
In response to Glyph of Living Bomb clarification?
Currently, Glyph of Living Bomb crits do not cause
* ignites
* Hot Streak procs
* and do not properly crit for their multiplier damage
These have been reported and are being looked at, but just curious about the intentions of this spell. Living Bomb has massive implications to the state of Mage dps in 3.1, and whether this glyph will help solve some of the RNG problems that the TtW Fire & Frostfire spec's suffer from.
Any clarification would be great. I believe that TtW Fire and Frostfire will benefit greatly from this Glyph if it does trigger ignites and hot streaks, although ignite munching may cause more problems than the ignite benefit would bring (since the crits are so small on the DoT portion of Living Bomb).
Referenced PTR threads:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15671260523&sid=1
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15668073256&pageNo=1&sid=1#0
We suspect the glyph (and fire mages) would probably be overpowered if those crits on periodic damage powered Hot Streak etc. That would be a pretty big dps boost.
The glyph is just supposed to let Living Bomb do more damage.
in response to "Improved Scorch in new PTR build"
Our logic was that if you have the talent (improved scorch), you're probably going to be pushing Scorch (or else why did you take the talent?). Since you are pushing Scorch mostly to help the group, having an extra chance to crit can make that Scorch button less painful as well as having a better chance of getting a Hot Streak going.
In response to Can Winter's chill get the scorch treatment
The logic was that Frost mages get the debuff from casting what they are normally going to cast. Fire mages don't necessarily want to cast Scorch.
For the past few months blizzard has stayed completely silent in the mage forums, allowing it to sort of decay into a pit of despair and QQ.
However just in the past couple days, one thread has been locked (thankfully, can read it here if you want to lose a few brain cells) and yet another blue post (after this one that I responded to in the previous post), in response to the molten armor concerns.
I just wish they'd start locking bad threads in the U.S. mage forums.
Though what he had to say was minimal its a good sign for the direction we are headed.
Blue-tagging to let you know that we are reading your feedback, but also that we appreciate the constructive discussion that has been going on so far in this thread.
My main concern with the molten change isnt pve, its pvp. As an arcane mage it could, in the end with ful ulduar gear, actually be a buff, but for pvp there is no way around this being a pretty hefty nerf to anything but frost mages fighting melee. Surely they realize this and are trying to come up with something at the moment, especially if they are reading that thread.
There are some interesting points in this blue post in response to "Hybrids are not 5% away from pure dps"
In our minds, Patchwerk is not the perfect fight around which dps should be balanced. It is a relatively simple fight. However consider:
1) Warriors don't get rage from taking damage on Patch. On fights where warriors get rage, their dps will go up. Which case do you balance around? (We balance around both, which is why you can't just look at the Patch numbers.)
2) Patch is a very stationary fight. Certain specs do better when the boss doesn't move. Other specs care a lot less if the boss doesn't move, provided they don't have to move as well.
3) Patch has no adds. Adds can add a lot to a fight. Even if you say "trash doesn't matter" (which we think is silly to say), there are boss fights with adds. Killing them quickly can get you back to the boss. Some classes can swap targets or do AE damage faster or more easily than others.
4) Patch is a short fight. This is probably the most important factor. If you have a cooldown you can blow once every three minutes, then that cooldown counts for a lot more on a three minute fight than a five minute fight. If your cooldown lasts for 20 sec, that counts for more the shorter the fight it. We were watching dps on Ulduar fights the other day. The amount of additional dps that a raid can kick in when they need to burn something down quickly is extraordinary, sometimes double what the raid can normally do.
We look at Patchwerk numbers. We don't balance around just those numbers.
I also find it slightly suspicious that many raids can achieve the same dps (or within a few %s) night after night on the same boss. The delta is caused by things like RNG and skill. But that is a broader topic.
Furthermore, if you are downplaying skill and just assuming that every one in your raid is at the top of your game, then why did some guilds reach Illidan, Archimonde, KJ or Sarth 3D faster? You can blame it all on them being able to devote more time to the attempts if you want, but we think there is more going on.
We stand by "It just isn't going to turn out that way on every parse, folks."
P.S. I also won't claim that the dps numbers are balanced where we want them in 3.0. Many of our 3.1 changes are designed to address those issues.
Remember kids: every fight has its pros and cons for every class; theory is theory.
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