I loved mages back in BC WotLK, those frost bolt ice lance combos
Fire was a really exciting spec back in ICC when crit chance got high enough to start getting pyro procs and they felt rewarding to get
Casted abilities also hit for damage and weren’t just things you did to fish for procs
Buff frost bolt and fire ball damn it
Honestly its one of the reasons I can’t seem to get behind current caster classes. It’s not hate, its more than likely just me. but.
I find myself struggle to stay awake as I spam a button waiting for something to flash on my screen to chain a bunch of instant casts that lasts 10-20 seconds and then go back to standing still pressing that button again.
It’s odd because just spamming high damage frost bolts with less damage on procs would sound more boring
But currently spamming low damage frost bolts to get ice lances just feels dumb
I wish they’d nerf the amount of procs for both fire and frost and dramatically boost the damage of casted abilities
And give us back frost fire bolt
Honestly though yeah, it does sound more boring but when you got those procs like you said ‘it felt rewarding’
Now you get a proc every few seconds, specially if your fire, believe they have a passive where their crit chance goes higher the longer they go without critting.
I liked the big numbers of the days of old while casting, being a turret then felt like a turret, not a ball-pitcher firing styrofoam balls.
Cast locked - big number
cast locked - big number
proc - even bigger number
Cast locked - laughable number
cast locked- laughable number
proc turn into pyroblast machine gun
It has been like this since forever, class designers are skewed too much in favor to melee. So much that since Vanilla only melee classes have been incorporated to the game (DK, Monk and DH) and one has been removed (Survival Hunter).
Demon hunters were just a dumb addition
They made monks, a melee leather class with a 2 charge directional mobility move and drops orbs for hp on monster kill
Then made demon hunters, a melee leather class with a 2 charge directional mobility move and drops orbs for hp on monster kill
And they overloaded the leather equipment slot
It’s kinda silly isn’t it?
What’s happened is that over time, mobility on other classes has gone up higher and higher and higher and reached a whole new peak where blizzard kinda realized, hey, mages and other casters are not going to be able to survive standing still anymore. So they’ve silently pushed casters into the instant cast territory via proc mechanics.
People wondering why blizz isn’t talking about fire mages? Its because in secret, they’re tweaking it so it’ll fit the mobility era and then will prob push those insights into the other specs when its perfect.
It’s a much easier solution than having to literally redesign every other class in the entire game.
To blizz, they want a system where you cast just 1 or 2 things slowly but then it triggers a chain reaction of instants. They probably have a very scientific and mathematical formula buried away in HQ somewhere with a ratio like, in every 20 seconds of combat, one should only be standing still 2 seconds and then 18 seconds of abilities with movement. And every cd in the game in terms of charges, leaps, dashes, rolls, etc are all timed around this ratio.
I feel like the Fishing Profession and Frost Mage DPS are pretty much the same thing right now. Cast and hope for good RNG. Should probably give us fishing skill ups every time we proc Brain Freeze or Fingers of Frost.
its the way they want classes played now… if you havent noticed, its all the same, spamable buttons and the builders and spenders.
You also get 33% baseline crit.
PvE:
To me - Frost feels way better, same with arcane. There’s a rhythm to both of them, the spec’s have flow and active management of procs. Fire’s withdrawal after combustion feels way too bleh.
PvP:
To me - Fire feels best because their damage window isn’t kickable, they have an instant proc guarantee w/ combustion. Arcane and frost don’t.
In PvP - if specs are going to be so dependent on hard casting, they shouldn’t be sitting there wondering why their hard casts smack for 7k max with CD’s when people have 30-40k health pools. Heck, if an MM hunter with an uninterruptable cast is hitting for 15k crits without CD’s or setup, why are instant ice lance casts that can only happen after an interruptible spell has procced hitting for 5-6k without CD’s?
Doesn’t make sense imo.
Its not meta by any means, but Glacial Spike and brain freezes tend to line up pretty well for me.
Its fun in lfr and the random battlegrounds i play. With rune can about one shot a flag carrier or healer with a follow up ice lance.
I miss deep freeze.
In BGs you may be able to cast some Glacial Spikes if you hide, but once you grab some attention you can forget about that spell. IMO the game has to move away from big damage long cast spells. It turns it a slow drag and also makes it difficult to balance. New games are more dynamic, in fact casting as a concept is so old school and there are so many alternatives.
As cool as that spell looked, you basically have it now … it’s just called Ebonbolt and doesn’t lock you out of two spell schools if you get interrupted. Getting it baseline so we could control our procs might be a solution.
It’s funny because I would like the opposite. The specs have 1 filler spell, and standing still all day to cast that isn’t fun regardless of the numbers. It doesn’t fit in with the modern playstyle which is much more heavy on movement and damage windows. The issue is, Blizzard would have to balance it so we’re not OP on low-movement fights, but as soon as we get to something with high movement our dps tanks. It’s been the issue for Arcane for a decade now. Personally I’d prefer if Blizzard increased the proc rates to encourage casting, which would increase the rewards for casting without punishing casters.
The whole staying still to cast concept is no longer valid for this game when every class and their mother can reach you anyway.
Arcane is waiting for you.
I hate watching Jaina use frost magic to create huge ice spikes out of the ground to impale multiple enemies and rain down ice comets to nuke large areas, while my mage spams small frostbolts that hit like a water balloon. How am I the champion again?
Oh I show her who’s the champion when I mount on her water elemental. Take that murderer of zandalarii.
I think you’re giving them too much credit. They’re probably just throwing stuff around, hoping it will stick. They’re clueless.