Hiya Forums, I’ve played mage for quite a while in Classic, and I thought I’d give my 2 cents on the direction Blizzard can take the class in SoD P4. I’ll be going over the following: talent changes, rune slots, changes to rune slots, runes that need corrections, possible new runes, what it feels like playing mage in P3 and the problems it has and should be corrected for P4, and possible new builds using what I write here.
Keep in mind that the ideas I suggest are to make the mage class fun and do competitive damage at the same time. And to keep up with melee in P4 casters in general are going to need some big buffs.
Talents
Arcane talents
Arcane Focus - Should be changed to grant hit to all spells.
Improved Arcane Missiles - Should be changed from just preventing arcane missiles push back to-> Arcane Stability which prevents pushback for all spells.
Fire talents
Improved Fireball should be changed to → Pyroclastic Flow → which reduces the cast time of Fireball and Frostfire bolt by .5 seconds.
Burning Soul–>Changed from only affecting fire spells to all spells.
Improved Scorch → With how quick most bosses are in SoD, and most raids being 20 man (2 mages max) 5 scorch casts are a lot. Change to 2 or 3 casts for full effect. And before someone says that warriors have to do the same thing, it’s not really. Warriors are stacked in raids, and Sunder Armor is instant cast and reaches 5 stacks instantly with all warriors doing a 1st global Sunder. Meanwhile, mages have to 1.5 second cast Scorch and hope that we don’t get a resist on the Scorch effect, which means we have to cast extra scorches instead of our main damage spells.
Frost talents
Elemental precision - should be changed to grant hit to all spells.
Improved Frostbolt should be changed to → Enhanced Cryocasting - which reduces the cast time of Frostbolt and Spellfrost bolt by .5 seconds.
Arctic Reach- should include Spellfrost bolt.
Winter’s Chill - debatable if it should be changed like improved scorch because it’s applied through main damage spells.
Runes and possible solutions to the problems with runes.
In all honesty, having a required equipment slot for runes (I.E Spell Power on Boots) should not be a thing. Players should be able to apply any rune to any equipment slot that can accept runes. But, if the required equipment slot stays a thing, a compromise would be to add ring slots as two prismatic slots that can accept any rune.
However, if the equipment slot rule persists, below is a list to where the runes could be shuffled to. A list of the runes that need adjustment will be below that.
CURRENT
Head - Deep freeze, Advanced Warding, Temporal Anomaly
Chest - Burnout, Fingers Of Frost, Enlightenment, Regeneration
Wrist - Balefire Bolt, Molten Armor, Displacement
Hands - Arcane Blast, Living Bomb, Rewind Time, Ice Lance
Waist - FrostFire Bolt, Hot Streak, Missile Barrage, Spellfrost Bolt
Legs - Icy Veins, Living Flame, Arcane Surge, Mass Regeneration
Feet - Brain Freeze, Spell Power, Chronostatic Preservation
REVISED
Head - Advanced Warding, Temporal Anomaly, Molten Armor(should be baseline), Displacement
Chest - Burnout, Fingers of Frost, Enlightenment, Regeneration
Wrist - Balefire Bolt, Frostfire Bolt, Spellfrost Bolt
Hands - Arcane Blast, Living Bomb, Rewind Time, Ice Lance, Deep Freeze(back to helm slot if molten armor is baseline)
Waist - Hot Streak, Brain Freeze, Missile Barrage
Legs - Icy Veins, Living Flame, Arcane Surge, Mass Regeneration
Feet - Spell Power, Chronostatic Preservation
Runes that need correction
Molten Armor - Should be made baseline.
Temporal Anomaly - Should be raid wide. It would probably be too strong if uncapped raid wide, so maybe raid wide but capped to 5-10 targets per pulse.
Frostfire Bolt - Taking this rune should also make Pryoblast and Fire blast be Frostfire damage to take advantage of Ice Shards.
Arcane Blast - The arcane blast stack needs to increase the damage of other arcane spells by more than 15%.
Rewind Time - Should just be baseline, can’t use it if you don’t have regeneration or mass regeneration runed on anyway. And it’ll never be picked over arcane blast for mage healers
Ice Lance - IT’S DEAD JIM!!! Seriously though, this rune is so dead that Arthas couldn’t resurrect it. If you have a frozen target, literally cast ANYTHING else and it’s a better choice. Only way to fix it is to make it do meaningful damage against frozen targets.
Hot Streak - Should be changed to allow Frostfire Bolt and Pyroblast to contribute to Hot Streak.
Missile Barrage - Spellfrost bolt should be added to the spells that can proc this.
Living Flame - The nerf in P2 was justified, but it went too far. If you’re going to keep it on a 10 second duration/30s CD and have it be as slow as it is, make it spawn on target.
Arcane Surge - Will not be used because it ooms you and the mana return it does give is not enough to justify it’s use. Only way to make it somewhat viable would be to make it’s mana regen equal to Evocation, and the cooldown lowered to 30s. Would probably be very good with those two changes. It would also solve a lot of mana issues mages have in AoE.
Mass Regen - Consider lowering the mana cost.
Brain Freeze - Move off of foot slot, no one takes it because Spell Power and Chronostatic Preservation are the go to for damage mages and mage healers respectively. Refer to my above words about required equipment slots for runes and prismatic rune slots.
Possible new runes.
Rune of Ignition - Allows you to cast Fire Blast while casting other spells. Fire Blast is guaranteed to critically strike, and it’s cooldown reduced to 5s. In addition, Scorch is now castable while moving.
Rune of Arcane Hoarfrost - Turns Arcane Missiles/Blast into Spellfrost damage, and adds a 40% slowing effect to both that can proc Brain Freeze. In addition, each time any of your spells applies a slowing effect, you have a 30% chance to add a stack of the Arcane Blast effect, also increases the proc chance of Brain Freeze to 30%.
What it feels like in raid playing a mage in P3 and the problems it has.
When you have mana, it feels decent, but not great. Then when you’re oom and you have no Demonic Rune, Mana pot, Mana gem, or Evocation up… You sit and drink while the rest of the raid races ahead of you, and it feels AWFUL. For goodness sake give us something to give us more mana.
And before the naysayers chime in and say it’ll break mages even more when it comes to AoE farming. Blizzard already did away with most AoE farming with the accursed anti-boosting crap from SoM. And on the mana front, blizzard already cracked that one wide open by giving hunters this games version of aspect of the viper, which totally eliminates their mana needs, and on top of that, they gave them trap launcher. Hunter is a better AoE farmer than mages at the moment. With that said please do something about us constantly ooming during AoE situations. No other dps class ooms at all during AoE, only mages.
Single target situations mages don’t have mana issues at all. The main issue with mage single-target rotation in P3 is that it is SO BORING. Stack Scorch to 5 stacks (which takes forever when solo mage), apply living bomb, keep both of those refreshed when needed, then spam Frostfire bolt for the rest of the game. Reminds me heavily of Destruction Warlock in TBC, which isn’t a good thing.
As an after-thought, if some of the potential new runes I listed actually come to fruition, we may have mana problems in single-target situations if nothing is done with how many spells we will be able to throw out, especially with fire.
Possible Builds with above changes
Arcane/Frost
Spec - 31/0/20, Kind of weird arcane tree which utilizes 5/5 Arcane Stability for no pushback on any casts, then standard frost but spec 5/5 into shatter with cold snap for double icy veins. If these changes actually become a thing burnout could very well sim higher than fingers of frost, in which case just put the points in shatter into piercing ice, then the others into frost channeling and magic absorption.
Runes - This is assuming we have at least two prismatic slots on rings, or we can apply any rune to any slot of gear that can accept runes. It’s also using my revised runeslots.
Helm - Deep Freeze
Chest - Fingers of Frost
Wrist - Spellfrost bolt
Hands - Arcane blast
Waist - Missile Barrage
Legs - Icy Veins
Feet- Spell Power
Ring 1 - Arcane Hoarfrost(rune I created)
Ring 2 - Brain Freeze
Playstyle - Start fights with damage CDs and PoM an arcane blast–>If you get a missiles proc use that–>If no missiles proc but you get a Brain Freeze use Spellfrost bolt–>If no procs then cast another arcane blast. If you get decently lucky with procs, there will be a lot of missile and Spellfrost bolt spamming. If you don’t get a lot of procs, then you will have to hardcast arcane blast until you do get a proc.
Fire
Spec - 0/34/17 - Standard raid fire tree with no incinerate, except we have 3/3 in imp fire blast, Standard frost raid talents with cold snap for double icy veins, 1 flexible talent point that can go in frost channeling or Arcane Focus for 2% hit. With my revision Arcane Focus gives % hit to all spells.
Runes - This is assuming we have at least two prismatic slots on rings, or we can apply any rune to any slot of gear that can accept runes. It’s also using my revised runeslots.
Helm - Advanced Warding
Chest - Burnout
Wrist- Frostfire bolt
Hands - Living Bomb
Waist - Hot Streak
Legs - Icy Veins
Feet - Spell Power
Ring 1 - Ignition (rune I created
Ring 2 - Arcane Hoarfrost (rune I created)
Playstyle - Scorch to max stacks, fire blast on scorch crit for hot streak–> Pop damage CDS and cast Frostfire Bolt if you have a Hot streak up use that–> Once you get a crit on a Frostfire Bolt cast press Fire Blast for a Hot Streak Proc–> Cast Pyroblast at the end of Frostfire Bolt–>Spam Frostfire Bolt and use Fire Blast after a FrostFire Bolt crit. You will get instant cast Frostfire Bolts courtesy of Brain Freeze, just be mindful of where your hot streak is when you’re going to use an instant Frostfire bolt and use fire blast accordingly.
Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for Reading!