5.4 PTR Mage Changes/Thoughts - LAST UPDATE: 2013. 07. 15.

[Oltier 471]

Item - Mage T16 2P Bonus: Arcane Missiles causes your next Arcane Blast within 10 sec to cost 25% less mana, stacking up to 4 times. Consuming Brain Freeze increases the damage of your next Frost spell by $2% Ice Lance, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Cone of cold by 20%. Consuming Pyroblast! increases your haste by 750 for 4 sec, stacking up to 45 times.

Tried it...was like running up to the boss with Zippo at 518. I would suggest any mage reading this DON'T try it until you are higher than 80% of the player base (Vlad's words).

Or, until you are at about 40% crit etc etc. But of course if a player cannot play a spec too well (fire in this case) he should stick to frost. It's just Frost's main secondary stat, haste, after 50% is practically useless. And even under 50%, with heavy haste buffs. It is very very bad, whilst arcane's and fire's DPS scaling with Crit and Mastery is amazing and the more of them, will always be the better.

Yet again, you can stick to frost. You will get close to the other specced mages but you will hardly do better than them.

[Oltier 471]

• Glyph of Rapid Displacement (NYI) Blink now has 2 charges, gaining a charge every 25 sec, but no longer frees the caster from stuns and bonds.
• Glyph of Evaporation (NYI) Reduces the size of your Water Elemental by 50%.
• Glyph of Feather Fall (NYI) While Slow Fall is active, you will have feathers floating around you.
• Glyph of Abolish Curse (NYI) Teaches you Abolish Curse: Removes a curse from the target instantly, and every 5 seconds thereafter for the next 20 seconds. Replaces Remove Curse.

Interesting Mon, interesting!

[Oltier 471]

Talents

• Presence of Mind When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 sec becomes an instant cast spell. This spell is not on the global cooldown.and is unaffected by Alter Time. Mage - LvL 15 Talent. Instant. 1.5 min cooldown.

Major Glyphs

• Glyph of Combustion Increases the direct damage, the duration of the damage over time effect and the cooldown of Combustion by 100%. Major Glyph. 50%. Major Glyph.

[Vladamyr 169]

hmmm to the glyph of Combustion change. I wonder if it will be a dps loss now to use the glyph (since it won't line up with anything)? At least maybe it will change it to not be mandatory (and honestly that may be a good thing). Presence of Mind change seems absolutely negligible. Crit levels will be our buff anyway so all good still (I think).

[Oltier 471]

Yes, I've been thinking the same. Now, apparently I will be able to go for Blazing speed (I bet, this is what Blizzard want us to choose)

As for the glyph.. Glyphed combustion will become 67,5 seconds CD. This meaans...

0 sec

67,5 sec

135 sec

202,5 sec

270 sec

337,5 sec

405 sec

Alter Time:

0 sec

180 sec...

360 sec...

ICD trinkets:

0 sec

45 sec

90 sec

135 sec

180 sec

225 sec

270 sec

315 sec

360 sec

So, new glyphed combustion will SOMETIMES line up with an ICD trinket... IF THERE WERE ANY! Good design, Blizz... >.>

I honestly don't think this is the ideal way to nerf mages. ^^ Since.. it is not a nerf after all..? :D

[Vladamyr 169]

Yeah I do love my blazing speed! Wish they would do something to balance out those talents properly. Maybe add a charge system to blink (instead of POM) to let you double blink and have ice flows changed into something that maybe nerfs your movement speed (1/2 or 3/4) but allows you to channel on the move or something?

[Oltier 471]

Hahh, do you think fire mages would use it even then? Schorch!

[Vladamyr 169]

haha I guess i was thinking it might be a slight buff to invocation on high movement fights where you are moving more consistently but not having to move far? totally off the top of my head not real well thought out.

[Ghanjo 37]

Blue post about the changes to PoM and the Combustion glyph:

We'll be reverting both of these changes in the next PTR build.

Here’s a little more insight into our thinking here (and why the changes even popped up on the PTR in the first place):

We have a few concerns with how Fire is playing out at the moment. Fire scales incredibly well with gear, and we’re worried that they’ll end up doing way too much damage in high end gear. However, we’re trying to avoid just nerfing Fire’s scaling, as that would unfairly hurt any Fire mage who ISN’T in high-end gear.

We’re also worried that Fire is leaning too heavily on perfect cooldown usage. It’s awesome when a highly-skilled player is able to use all of their abilities to the fullest and be rewarded with a little extra damage. It’s significantly less awesome when failing to do so results in a massive loss of DPS. At the moment, Fire is extremely dependent on lining up all of your cooldowns (most notably Alter Time and Presence of Mind) to score massive Combustion damage. If you pull it off, you’re rewarded with a lot of damage. Mess it up, and your performance suffers dramatically. We’d like to tone down the differences between those high and low ends a bit.

We also think that Presence of Mind in particular is just too important to Fire right now. There’s really no choice in that tier – PoM is just too good compared to the other options. We want talents to be a choice.

Those are the issues we’d like to fix, and why the earlier changes hit the PTR to begin with. We may try other methods, or we may decide to just leave things alone for 5.4, but we do want to fix them.

Source

Edited July 17, 2013 by Gambolputty

[Akomagus 8]

Item - Mage T16 2P Bonus: Arcane Missiles causes your next Arcane Blast within 10 sec to cost 25% less mana, stacking up to 4 times. Consuming Brain Freeze increases the damage of your next Frost spell by $2% Ice Lance, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Cone of cold by 20%. Consuming Pyroblast! increases your haste by 750 for 4 sec, stacking up to 45 times.

Or, until you are at about 40% crit etc etc. But of course if a player cannot play a spec too well (fire in this case) he should stick to frost. It's just Frost's main secondary stat, haste, after 50% is practically useless. And even under 50%, with heavy haste buffs. It is very very bad, whilst arcane's and fire's DPS scaling with Crit and Mastery is amazing and the more of them, will always be the better.

Yet again, you can stick to frost. You will get close to the other specced mages but you will hardly do better than them.

I have a question about this. I switched to fire trying to practice like you said because of how dominant it will be in 5.4 (barring upcoming changes). I am really having a difficult time with it as far as getting this heating up trick to work consistently and the macros and cds to work. It seems like hitting the macro is screwing up and my pyroblast disappears or does not become and instant cast like it should. Just several problems. I haven't given up yet, but i'm worried that my limited play time this week will not allow me to be productive in raid this weekend. Also I have a big problem with knowing when i've used up my PoM pyroblast. Trying to get them all off it always ends up I try to cast one extra pyroblast (with it's long cast time) have to space bar to cancel it and then hit my combustion and I obviously lose ticks. It's a bit frustrating nonetheless and I agree with the blue that talks about it being a significant dps loss if you can't get it spot on.

I have really grown accustomed to frost for two big reasons. I like having blazing speed, and I like glyphing to get the long nether tempest tick. Having to refresh NT or LB every 10 seconds is really annoying when you are trying to lineup other stuff for the combustion that is SO IMPORTANT to get right to do damage. So my basic question is, do you think the mastery changes to Frost will fix the scaling issue and allow me to get close to fire, or do you still think that this point in the ptr that in 5.4 fire will be the only way to go. I'm not a math guy and I really like having some room for error as I don't consider myself the most adept player. Are these new mastery changes going to help frost stay competitive or not?

[RunicLovePotion 9]

• Glyph of Rapid Displacement (NYI) Blink now has 2 charges, gaining a charge every 25 sec, but no longer frees the caster from stuns and bonds.
• Glyph of Evaporation (NYI) Reduces the size of your Water Elemental by 50%.
• Glyph of Feather Fall (NYI) While Slow Fall is active, you will have feathers floating around you.
• Glyph of Abolish Curse (NYI) Teaches you Abolish Curse: Removes a curse from the target instantly, and every 5 seconds thereafter for the next 20 seconds. Replaces Remove Curse.

Interesting Mon, interesting!

Abolish Curse sounds like a really bad idea in PvP against Affliction Warlocks (ya know Unstable Affliction kinda of problems) but It seems to be really nice if combined the Glyph of Remove Curse (and it got buffed yay!).

Glyph of Rapid Displacement might prove itself useful in fights with a lot of movement if you can't take Blazing Speed and have a glyph slot left.

And I just wanted to tell that I might play frost more often just because of that changes to Water Elemental's look (at long last).

Edited July 22, 2013 by Johnzinho

[Vladamyr 169]

So my basic question is, do you think the mastery changes to Frost will fix the scaling issue and allow me to get close to fire, or do you still think that this point in the ptr that in 5.4 fire will be the only way to go. I'm not a math guy and I really like having some room for error as I don't consider myself the most adept player. Are these new mastery changes going to help frost stay competitive or not?

Hopefully, but it's way too early to tell yet.

As to your fire problems that you are having currently, go hit a dummy for about 30 minutes to an hour and see if you can get the problems ironed out there. You can use Weak Auras and create an aura to track POM. Once I start my combustion combo (using Alter Time and POM) I keep moving spamming my Pyroblast button until my 1st POM aura has disappeared, then I recast Alter Time (while still strafing or moving) and spam the last of my Pyro's till the POM Aura disappears. There should be enough time to hit your combustion before that last pyro hits.

[Vladamyr 169]

2013.07.18 PTR Patch Notes

Talents

• Frost Bomb now deals 70% damage to players (up from 60%).
• Living Bomb now deals 85% damage to players (up from 70%).
• Nether Tempest now deals 85% damage to players (up from 70%).
• Temporal Shield now also reduces damage taken by 15% while active in addition to existing effects.

Glyphs

• Major Glyphs
  • Glyph of Blink now increases distance travelled with the Blink spell by 8 yards (up from 5 yards).
  • Glyph of Invisibility has been replaced with Glyph of Rapid Displacement. Glyph of Rapid Displacement gives Blink two charges, gaining a charge every 15 seconds, but no longer frees the Mage from stuns and bonds.
  • Glyph of Remove Curse now increases the damage dealt by 15% after successfully removing a curse (up from 10%).
  • Glyph of Spellsteal now heals the Mage for 5% of their maximum health after successfully stealing a spell (up from 3%).
• New Minor Glyphs
  • Glyph of Condensation: Increases the size of the Mage's Water Elemental.
  • Glyph of Evaporation: Reduces the size of the Mage's Water Elemental.
  • Glyph of the Unbound Elemental: The Mage's Water Elemental is replaced by an Unbound Water Elemental.

Frost

• Mastery: Frostburn has been replaced by Mastery: Icicles. When the Mage damages an enemy with their Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, and the Water Elemental's Waterbolt, (12% + 1.5% per Mastery) of the damage done is stored as an Icicle for 15 seconds. Up to 5 Icicles can be stored at once. Casting Ice Lance launches all stored Icicles at the target. Fingers of Frost now increases the damage of Ice Lance by an additional 2%, Brain Freeze increases the damage of the instant cast Frostfire Bolt by 2%, and damage done by the Mage's Water Elemental is increased by 2%.
• Frostbolt no longer causes the target to take an additional damage from Frostbolt.
• Ice Lance damage has been increased by 29%.
• Water Elemental

• Waterbolt damage has been increased by 9%.

[Vladamyr 169]

Currently it's a nerf for Frost on ptr and hurts the early gear scaling the most. Plenty of time for them to fix it though.

Little worried about this https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status/356169971937722369 hope he realizes that our mage class does need a rework of the T6 talent!

[Akomagus 8]

Hopefully, but it's way too early to tell yet.

As to your fire problems that you are having currently, go hit a dummy for about 30 minutes to an hour and see if you can get the problems ironed out there. You can use Weak Auras and create an aura to track POM. Once I start my combustion combo (using Alter Time and POM) I keep moving spamming my Pyroblast button until my 1st POM aura has disappeared, then I recast Alter Time (while still strafing or moving) and spam the last of my Pyro's till the POM Aura disappears. There should be enough time to hit your combustion before that last pyro hits.

Ohh, i'll give that a try thanks!

[Tyrendorf 1]

Good bye Fires, nice to meet you....

 

 

• Combustion Instantly deals 1,040 Fire damage and stuns the target for 3 sec. If the target is currently affected by your Ignite, it also burns the target for additional damage equal to half 20% of the damage per tick of the Ignite every 1 sec for 10 sec. When cast, resets the cooldown of your Inferno Blast ability. Mage - Fire Spec. 10% of Base Mana. 40 yd range. Instant. 45 sec cooldown.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Tyrendorf

[Zagam 1,982]

5% total loss.  Not a big deal for them.  They'll make up for it with their scaling.  Blame Critical Mass.  Fire will be just fine.  This won't fix the scaling as much as people think, but Arcane will be popular for about 3-4 weeks until the best Mages toss out awesome parses again.

[Tyrendorf 1]

I think it's not fixing scaling problems by any mean.

[slap 5]

Reading through this whole tread I am now more confused then ever on what spec to choose for 5.4 which is right around the corner... Was frost with all BiS normal gear and legendary back and just switched to fire last night. Wondering what I should stick with moving into 5.4.... Are most competitive mages with good gear going/staying with fire?

[Tyrendorf 1]

Play the spec u like. Frost would be good until 540. Probably Arcane will be slightly ahead, with fire getting better as you get more ilvl.

[Oltier 471]

Item level actually doesn't matter on its own. The crit rating is what matters a lot.. ^^ :)

 

We cannot know anything for sure about frost. We will have to have a few weeks of testing with the new Mastery.

 

Most mages will cahnge to arcane. It is a very stable spec, but it is still very boring an immobile.

 

Fire... Who knows yet? :) But I am pretty sure it will stay competitive.

[Vladamyr 169]

Results of August 21st PTR:

Frost = teh suck (ahh Blizzard, how you wound me)

Fire = Arcane (it is dependent on fight with about a 50/50 split) pretty much play what you are good at or have gear itemized for.

[Oltier 471]

Results of August 21st PTR:

Frost = teh suck (ahh Blizzard, how you wound me)

Fire = Arcane (it is dependent on fight with about a 50/50 split) pretty much play what you are good at or have gear itemized for.

 

Does frost really suck that much? I jsut swapped back for a bit to enjoy and om nom nom I enjoyed it indeed..:D

[Vladamyr 169]

Icicles are cool but frost (currently) scales worse on ptr than it does on live.      Still have some time for a balance pass but from what i've read (there is a ton of the internets ranting) all frost changes were to lower pvp burst and they didn't care one bit about pve balance.    /sad

 

really hope they make some changes or hope that they missed updating a ptr setting to it's correct value

[Oltier 471]

yeaa pvp balance.. :D

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx8Qmy6iCsU