Hi everyone,
I’ve been closely following the recent datamines for the suspected SOD patch and have some concerns regarding the mage set design. If you ever take a peak in the mage discord, it’s very clear that mages aren’t having as much fun end game.
- Evocation Dependency in Trash Packs: Having to work around a channeled evocation is proving to be a major hindrance, especially during trash packs. Other classes are able to dish out full damage consistently, while we’re forced to stand still for 8 seconds—now potentially 12—to remain competitive. This not only affects our overall contribution but also disrupts the pace of encounters.
- Lack of Alternative Options: It would be refreshing to see some alternatives that don’t rely solely on evocation. How about introducing an instant cast flamestrike or even allowing frostfire orb as a 2-set bonus? A more potent 6-set that lets us move away from the evocation channeling would really elevate our playstyle and help us keep pace with other classes.
- Frost Mage Viability: Additionally, where’s the love for frost mages? The current 4-piece bonus isn’t cutting it, especially when brain freeze isn’t on par with alternative rune options. Frost mages deserve a kit that accentuates their strengths without forcing us into a restrictive, channeled gameplay loop.
Would love to hear one of the designers thoughts and maybe they could walk us through their design reasoning.
Cheers!
8 Likes
100% Agree. If devs want to double down on the evo playstyle, make evo an instant cast/buff, or reduce channeling to 1-2s, or reduce cast time by haste? anything that doesn’t make you have to do 12s channeling. even a 4s channeling sucks
It doesn’t feel good. It’s only for prepulls.
5 Likes
Yes please. It’s really not fun to have to do nothing and evocate before every boss.
For more casual guilds they dont even want to do a pulltimer so it especially sucks for them. Also being balanced around 8 (or 12) seconds of doing nothing isnt fun because it makes our non boss damage terrible.
3 Likes
This set bonus is literally AWFUL. I am quitting the game if this goes live. Even if the naxx evocation stays, I am done. It is a terrible design. My raid has to play every boss pull around evocation. Terrible design.
4 Likes
Pretty shocked this is the direction the devs are going with mage. I haven’t met a single mage that enjoys the evocate set. Most of my guilds mages have rerolled this phase. The state of mage is in awful position and we are not taking this time to solve our problems but instead make the problems we have much worse.
Evocate feels awful in raiding right now. No one likes sitting there and channeling for 8 seconds. Not all guilds do pre-pull timers, not all guilds are parse guilds some of us speed run. Evocate has been awful for these raids and worst of all it doesn’t solve mages biggest problem which is AoE.
Mages are pitiful on trash right now. To keep up as a fire mage I have to rune swap for frozen orb and ice lance. It is WILD to me that the developers see the state of mage and think we should increase the time of evocate to 12 seconds, give us 10 seconds on icy veins, and not solve our aoe problems. Our single target damage is one of the best in the game, why are we not addressing AoE here?
Blizzard please rethink your direction for mage. You are actively killing this class when it should be at its most fun. Please consider making evocate something more along the lines of innervate. A buff that lets us move and cast while its active. Then please solve our aoe problems. Make living bomb explode no matter what if the target dies, or make it spread. Reduce the cooldown on frozen orb by a large amount.
12 second evocate is just peak horrible gameplay
9 Likes
Agreed. Mostly everything has been said already in the current comments.
It was bad enough that we would have been forced into a pre-pull item set swap, but hey we would have dealt with it.
I simply cannot get behind the reasoning for doubling down on this set design while other specs like retribution are getting a fun new “resource” mechanic from theirs.
Mage is DOA if this goes live.
4 Likes
lol… I need to make a WA that reminds me about evo… I always forget. lol
i’d suggest to put your feedback in the ptr forum, not here.
ill enjoy 20s pulltimers just for mages
its made mage very frusterating and un fun.
ready check… pull timer starts… “oh wait i forgot to___” fml
it is making me hate my guildies more than enjoy playing this game. please do literally any other set bonus… evocate as a cooldown is just the worst.
Please for the love of god stop chaining us to evocation. NOTHING feels worse than being rooted to the ground for 8-12 seconds, PRAYING you don’t get interrupted or knocked back.
It also makes our non-boss damage garbage. Brutally painful.
Evocate meta is terrible. The damage buff is nice. but being LOCKED into having to sit still for 12s to even do normal dps is annoying. and god forbid it gets interrupted by something and then youre just screwed out of doing more dps than tanks. Something needs to change. make it a flat damage increase or remove the channel on Evocate and make it a self buff similar to innervate (just not castable on others). Or reduce channel time to 4s and give 2x/3x stacks per second.
PLEASE BLIZZARD WE DONT LIKE HAVING TO EVOCATE TO BE GOOD DPS.
It is a very un-fun way to play the class. I would rather have them cut the time that evocate takes to cast by 4 seconds than add 4 seconds to it.
But even that isn’t engaging or enjoyable, make bfb stack to 9 again with a set bonus. Or just put the frost zg set bonuses on the newer better gear so we aren’t forced to wear zg level gear to play frost.
Literally anything else would be better than a 12 second evocate.
what is this fun/unfun obsession you guys are using as argument? it has nothing to do with having fun or not for 8 seconds, it is just a terrible set bonus. it’s like saying I’m not having fun while im sitting and drinking for mana, please remove it from the game. focus up and just call it what it is, it is terrible game design thats it.
simple useful set bonuses:
Icy Veins CD reduced to 1.5 min
Frozen orb CD reduced to 30 sec
Ice lance & SFB 6y range increase
Brain Freeze does not consume FoF and has no GCD
Reduces SFB/FFB cast time by 0.5s
20% more damage with frost/fire spells
EASY. NEXT
1 Like
For frost healing mages, brain freeze is the play, because instant spellfrost bolts means more healing. Bigger damage crits don’t translate into bigger heals. Combined with -0.5s GCD trinket, and it’s freakin’ sweet.
Buuuuuuut this set bonus is on the dps set, not the healing one.
And I see you not being happy with the 8, and then 12 second precast. But as a healing mage, my prepull ritual is:
Healing set: Mass regen group a. 6 seconds.
Healing set: Mass regen group b. 6 seconds.
Healing set: Mass regen group c. 1.5 second GCD.
DPS set: Evocation. 8 seconds.
Healing set: Mass regen group d (tank group). 1.5 seconds.
If someone pulls early and gets me into combat (eg. warriors / druids raging prepull), I cannot switch back to healing set, and am screwed. Total time: 23 seconds. Because nobody is putting up a 25 second pull timer (I’ve asked), I gotta just keep spamming the mass regens for ~5 minutes until people get ready to pull (we aren’t exactly a speed running group).
In phase 8, it looks like it’ll be the same, except evocate for 12 seconds, and add a normal regen on tank to the end, so it’s 28.5 second prepull to be maximally effective.
Love SoD and don’t post often, but really dislike current Evo gameplay. Feels extremely bad when the tank doesn’t give you a pull timer, or you get popped 2 ticks in and have to roll with it, and the is no recovery to that. To have this doubled down on next phase is a quite a bummer.
Bumping this to say EVO playstyle really is not fun. Please make a change: T3 felt bad, T3.5 would feel even worse.
Thanks for looking into that guys, and can’t wait to see the new content.
SOD is exciting, but 12s of no gameplay is really not that fun.
Looking for any mage player who enjoys the Evocation tier bonus and gameplay and is looking forward to the scarlet enclave bonus, I’ll wait.