Pretty awesome. I’m excited about it. Works out to be a pretty decent buff for Arcane overall, maybe like 4.5% in ST? Curious to see how it impacts Frost & Fire. Don’t play em enough to know.
Intensifying Flame buff is probably the best one for raid right now. Do wish the talent were a bit more dynamic (highest at 1 target, decreasing thereafter vs. hard set at 3) but I’ll take it.
I will happily take all of them but the more I look at them the more I think they went out of their way to make them seem targeted when in reality they missed the mark. For instance Arcane’s AoE is currently in a much worse place dmg wise than its ST yet they only buffed AB and AM. It’s really frustrating because after the rework they finally made Arcane AoE feel good but the damage just isn’t there.
yep you get lucky with 5 orbs and you look like a hero, next pull they are wondering wtf happened to his damage, i think a buff to AOE is needed AB/Orb
Is that the best argument you have against mage getting some positive tuning? Have you considered that perhaps the reason that a mage may be included in higher end 5-man content may have a lot less to do with their damage contribution and more to due with their utility spells? Time warp and mass barrier are group utility spells that have a significant impact in high level mythic plus, and ice cold/greater invisibility allow a mage to survive multiple mechanics that would otherwise be lethal to classes without it. These are class level talents and admittedly they are strong for exactly this type of content.
However, to be sure, it is not mage damage that is strong. There are many classes and specs that are currently outperforming mage. Of the pure dps specs, all of the others are outperforming mage in heroic and mythic raids by an appreciable margin and have at least one spec that is numerically superior in M+. In mythic raid in particular, all other dps specs are outperforming frost and fire, other than one spec. The one spec that is numerically behind frost and fire in mythic raid is augmentation; the support spec. I do not believe this is coincidence, nor is it a new phenomenon.
To be clear, mage is represented in the higher levels of mythic plus because of its utility, not its damage. This wouldn’t necessarily sound like a bad deal if not for the fact that mage is not a spec; it is a class. That class is pure dps class that has no alternative other than to occupy a dps position in any type of content. Arcane, fire and frost utility do not vary enough between each other as to distinguish themselves substantively between the other. The only reason that one spec would be preferred over another in the current version of the game would be dps. And, if that dps was lousy across all three specs, it would an undesirable class to bring unless it offered good situational utility. Which, as per the above, it does.
So, bear with me now, if the peripheral utility of the class is useful enough in some aspects of the game as to create a strong case for its inclusion in high end content, and this benefit allows the player base to overlook its deficits in pure throughput so much as to warrant its inclusion in the higher levels of end game content…I’m rather confident that this is the definition of a support spec. Unfortunately, in the case of the mage, this would render it a support class.
If you want to argue that mage utility is perhaps too strong, I wouldn’t present good faith argument against it. If you want argue that mage dps is not weak relative to other classes and specs; I’m afraid you would be arguing against what is at this point fairly simple comparative arithmetic.
I don’t track leader boards but I’m suspecting mage is the high(est) key because Aug is in the key and mage tends to benefit disproportionately well from Aug buffs. Are there any high keys where a mage appears without an Aug? That would be surprising to me. But I’d also be surprised if there was any high keys without an Aug in them, so it’s a bit of a catch 22. Since you need an Aug in high keys anyway, you also are more likely to bring a Mage to reap the biggest benefit. I don’t think it’s because mage is SO AWESOME on its own (it’s not), but because the combo of Aug/Mage is.
Yeah that’s true, and when you do look at the leader boards, you see alot of “mages” but when you look closer, its not like its a bunch of different mage players, its the same small group of top players that always held those accomplishments and are extremely well coordinated.
Not really, Aug is in all of them. Mage is the optional spot.
What more would you expect? We got reworked not that long ago, unlikely to happen again so soon. Numbers tuning is all that we’ll get at least until War Within.
And besides, I’m by and large happy with the rework at least for Fire. I think simply adjusting the dials is good enough for now. I wouldn’t be sad if they tweaked some of the lesser used talents, but buffing our core spells is always going to be welcome.
I admire the passion, but just a suggestion: don’t write a thesis in response to three lines from a character that has a single digit post count and is quite clearly trolling.
It wasn’t for him, I’m not yet quite that naïve. It was for the presumably many others that check the u.gg rankings and misunderstand where mage is actually at in terms of throughput tuning.
And yes, not my best post. In my defense, I had been drinking…my rage bar was full and so I dumped it in mage buff defense treatise. These things happen.
