I’ve been hoping that Mage Armors would show up in our new Dragonflight talent trees or even just added baseline to our arsenal but I haven’t heard anyone talk about it, thus I’m posting this! (I’m putting Mage Armor in italics whenever I’m talking about the armors as a whole rather than specifically just the spell Mage Armor itself.)
Basically, I think it would be a great idea to remove the Mage Armor Effect that was compounded into our specialization specific barriers (ice, prismatic, blazing), and allow these Armor effects to be castable buff effects again. Also, I think it would make sense to let these Mage Armor Buff effects act like an aura (no timer on the buff), so they wouldn’t need to be re-casted every 30 to 60 minutes or whatever.
The barrier spells are useful enough on their own with just the damage absorb mechanic. So removing the secondary effect on the barriers wouldn’t take away from them in my opinion. I assume the secondary effect was added to the barriers as a way to prune buttons out of the game maybe, but a Mage Armor buff isn’t really a rotational spell anyway- so I think it would be fine and add back more to the Mage class fantasy.
I think this would give Mages more agency over their character and also allow the Mage Armor effect to remain up and available at all times, rather than the effect dissipating when our barriers are broken. For example, allowing a Frost Mage to cast Mage Armor (the specific spell) when they need to mitigate incoming magical damage, or an Arcane Mage might want to cast Ice/Frost Armor to mitigate incoming physical damage and slow melee attacks.
I have very fond memories of these spells from back in the day and I’ve really missed them. I feel like they’re just so iconic to Mages and it’s sad that we haven’t had them in a long time. I’ve been playing Mage in WotLK Classic and using the Armor spells has been such a good time, you really feel the difference in the way you play when you switch between each armor type.
Hoping a kind Mage enthusiast at Blizzard reads this and considers it!! Lots of love. Very excited for Dragonflight <3
I’m of two minds with this. On one hand, I do think that giving players that option to have different effects on their armours/barriers is nice. On the other, I don’t feel that they really are much of a choice and whether they would be used as often as people think. More than likely, Mages would pick a single Armour and run it for the entire expansion.
Mage Armor for example: It’s primarily used for the mana regen, but that’s only really important for Arcane and as the expansion goes on mana tends to become less of an issue, to the point where even Arcane is unlike to be using it past the first or maybe second raid tier.
Both Frost and Fire (and to an extent Arcane depending on fight length) in Wrath all use Molten Armor for PvE, because Crit is such a great stat. That would also need to be amended slightly, because I don’t think Spirit is even a stat any more is it?
Frost Armor is generally only a pvp thing, because it provides almost no benefit in open world past a certain level. Frost probably wouldn’t use it because they don’t need more slows, and with how pvp works now the little slow on it probably doesn’t do much to escape.
That said though, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to have them. Even if we only pick one and stick to it all expansion, why not have it there just for flavour? I mean, we already have AI which could literally just be a 100 yard aura buff for what it’s worth, so…
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Right! I hear you on all your points and I thought those out! My thought is that they could update these armor spells to the modern day. I think all the armor spells should be strictly defensive and NOT offensive in any way. That way no one feels forced to use only one of them. They also shouldn’t have a mana cost like in later expansions so you can freely change between each armor even if you’re playing as Arcane spec lol.
Frost Armor- in my opinion had a super good design already and could be really good for a flat damage reduction for bursty raid/mythic+ damage. The “slowing attackers” effect would be super nice for solo content like questing and such. I believe the flat damage reduction was tuned various times from like 20% reduction to 15% reduction etc. so they would need to find a good balance for the spell of course.
Mage Armor- reduces the duration of the harmful effects from magical damage, which means it reduces the duration of DoT spells. This would be super useful in PvP compositions where there are double magic casters (shadow priest, warlock, balance druid) on the enemy team. The mana regeneration part of this spell is outdated and they could add a better secondary effect to the spell like “Magical damage has a chance to heal you on impact” or “Magical damage has a chance of reflecting the spell back at the attacker”. It could have its uses in PvE fights where there’s a lot of magical damage going off, thus healing you slightly over the course of the fight, and making it easier on your healers when DoTs are falling off of you faster than everyone else.
Molten Armor- this armor used to increase crit chance and I don’t think that should stay. It also reduced physical damage at one point, but I think a flat damage reduction should be left to Frost Armor. Which makes this armor the most difficult to decide what to do with defensively. I think maybe Molten Armor should keep the secondary effect where it damages attackers with fire magic when you are struck by an attack which could be useful in soloing and especially old content soloing. As for a main effect, I propose the armor could have a chance to proc a free short version of Blazing Speed. This would give you a nice way to zip away from a melee attacker when struck by them.
Like I said at the top, as long as these armors remained defensive and not offensive spells, there would be much more room to choose whatever suited the occasion.
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God, yes, please make these buffs just auras so I don’t have to put them in my bars, or refresh them so often…
Exactly, they are armors. IMO:
Frost armor: Reduce physical dmg taken by 5% and slow melee enemies.
Arcane armor: Reduce magic dmg taken by 5% and decrease duration of DoTs.
Fire armor: Reduce chance to be critically stricken by 5% and retaliate all attackers.