Mage updates to make PvP playable

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

Making a dedicated post for this as it seemed to have support. Probably will never be seen by the forces that be, but i will post to Mage Classic Discord as well.

How to fix mage in PvP:

PvP specific modifier:

  1. Healing from Regen/Mass Regen beacons no longer subject to PvP healing reduction, as they are tied to Arcane damage dealt which is already reduced by the 40% reduced spell damage modifier in PvP.
  2. Mana costs reduced by 40% (or 40% increased mana from Int, similar to the stam buff) while in BG to account for 40% spell damage reduction.

Talent Fixes:
Arcane Subtlety - Now pierces 30/60 all resist (up from 5/10)
Magic Attunement - Now increases Arcane Blast, Barrage, Missiles, and Surge range by 3/6 yds.
Improved Fireball - Now includes FFB and BFB
Improved Frostbolt - Now includes FFB, SFB, and BFB (potentially not stacking with imp FB, but really for 10 talent points to get 2 second FFB i believe its fine stacking, and BFB has a 4 cast limit so cant really spam it anyway).
Arctic Reach - Now also increases SFB and Ice Lance range by 10/20%
Piercing Ice - 35/70% pushback protection for frost spells
Cold Snap - Reduced to 5 min CD
Ice Barrier - 100% SP scaling

Rune Fixes :
Chest:
Regeneration - Now baseline ability -OR- merged into Mass Regen (having this compete with crit runes makes it unusable for any dps setup, and mage healers need the help that the extra crit would bring.)
Enlightenment - While between 30-70% mana gives 10% spell haste, under 30% mana is now 1% mana per second regeneration.

Helm:
Deep Freeze - Cannot be resisted. (zugger orcs)

Waist:
Missile Barrage - Can now be triggered at 25-40% rate by BFB (arcane spell).

Legs:
Living Flame - Move speed reverted to pre-nerf -OR- starts on target
Arcane Surge - Is no longer on the GCD.
Mass Regen - Beacon duration increased to 21s. Beacon’s are no longer dispellable.

Feet:
Spell Power - Removed, 50% fire critical damage added to Fire Power Talent, 50% Arcane critical damage added to Arcane Instability talent (these are the 25 point talents so they are not possible to stack)

Wrist:
Rewind Time - No longer reduced healing in PvP.
Displacement - Off GCD and now costs 0 mana.
Molten Armor - Moved to base class ability (it competes with baseline abilities, similar to paladins now baseline Horn vs BoM)
New: Slow - Replacing Molten Armor

Hands:
Ice Lance - Now has 25-35% SP scaling
Living Bomb - Ticks buffed comparatively to moonfire/sunfire and final explosion not checked for range/death (bombs currently will not explode outside of certain range or if you are dead)
Arcane Blast - 5% haste on Arcane Blast per stack until stacks consumed

7 Likes
2

I’m liking what I’m seeing with your suggestions. Would be sad to see the Spell power rune removed, but honestly it probably needs to go. To balance rune slots I would add that the Displacement rune be moved to the feet slot. This would give that slot 3 runes like all the others.

I would add that Magic Absorption be changed to 15 resistances per point stacking to 75. That might actually make that talent worth something.

And one other suggestion would be that Fire Ward and Ice Ward be given spell power scaling to keep up with damage scaling we are seeing.

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I think basically putting it into the later Arcane and Fire talents keeps it alive, while not making it compete with Brain Freeze. This lowers pure frost spells ceiling a little, but ice lance buffs would make up for it, as Frostbolt is basically never used for damage anyway, and CoC is still a good CC tool.

Even something like 5 per point would be a welcome change, yes.

Possibly incorporated into Advanced Warding

4

You need to understand that they have been aware of the issues with mages in pvp since p2 and they actively do not care.

I recommend you give up on the utter crap show that is SoD.

Check out Return of Reckoning the Warhammer private server.

It is THRIVING and the pvp is lit!

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Yeah come join all 40 players on a private server bro

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Not a big fan of having special PvP modifier just for us. It probs would be better to remove the 50% heal reduction on ourselves. It was too OP when STV was a thing and 5 mage groups were pumping AoE but it’s not relevant anymore.
The mana reduction makes sense but it could be added to a rune. Hunters have one giving them crit and 25% mana cost reduction, so why not add it to one of ours ? 40% might be a bit much but it would be nice to be able to use mana shield from time to time.

Completely agree with all of that. Still bewildered by Arctic Reach not modifying spellfrost bolt nor Ice Lance. I mean Ice Lance is a purely frost spell ! Also arcane spells should get a range increase to at least 36y if not 41.

Not sure about regeneration baseline. I like the fact that mage remains a DD first and foremost but can heal/offheal if runed accordingly. It could join mass regen rune though, so it would give both Regen and Mass Regen on one rune. It’s a bit redundant to have 2 runes needed for a very similar healing spell.

I completely agree with the rest, hopefully the devs look at it.

I don’t think mage needs a lot to be decent in PvP. Mainly more Stam on gears, slightly faster spellcasts/pushback protection and either blink or Displacement off GCD would go a long way already.

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what is this kind of logic? you want to move a rune because you want to see 3,3,3,3 runes per slot? sir, please use your brain if you want to add positive changes instead of your nevrotism for equal rune slots as a guidance center

8

They also need a damage buff OR the 40% spell dam reduction needs to be completely lifted off of us.

We are literally the worst DPS in PvP in the entire game right now, and we don’t even come as a close runner-up to the next worst DPS in PvP at the moment. It won’t matter if they make our spells cast faster, even though that would be a good start. The problem will still remain that we don’t do enough damage and that we will still go OOM before being able to kill a fully-geared player. Mage was perfectly fine before they implemented their damage reduction blanket.

9

That would help us heal ourselves, but no one else. It’s really not a special PVP modifier for us, as much as fixing the way this is coded in relation to the reduced PVP heal modifier in place.

It needs to be treated like warlock drain life, AFAIK drain life’s heal component does not get reduced in pvp combat, but beacon healing does - and its unnecessary because the heal is based on damage that is already being reduced.

This is a solid alternative and i added it to the OP, leg runes are far more flexible than chest.

10

oh man I remember my PC back in the day could NOT handle this above like 8-9 FPS.

is it really poppin? :thinking:

1 Like
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Being able to cast our current spells (Frostbolt/spellfrost bolt/Frostfire bolt) in 2 seconds would be a good damage increase already. With the ZG set frostbolt and SFB feel good damage-wise. The issue lies in the no push-back protection except when under Icy Veins (3 min cooldown) and the range being capped at 30yards.

I find mana more manageable atm. It used to be absolutely terrible but now I can fight a full team fight before being dry. It still would help to reduce some mana costs (blink/displacement/Ice barrier). They could also reduce the mana cost of our buffs again, cause Int + Ice armor + Ice barrier remove nearly half my mana bar.

2 Likes
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Yeeah man the pop is rising daily too

I think a lot of people who fed up with mmos and gravitating weird places for a fix.

They combined t2-4 in one and you’re bolstered in stats til 40 and the gearing process is so streamlined and easy to get into.

It’s really worth checking out if you want a good pvp MMORPG and no one can ever say it’s not a pvp game cause the community would attack you for it since they actually understand the point of having two factions is because it is a pvp game lol

2 Likes
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I remember the world having locations you can capture, did they turn into like quest hubs for the faction that controlled it or something? it’s been so long but I remember it being really cool

14

Every zone is a pvp zone and later they have keeps you take for your faction.

You level primarily through pvp starting at level 2.

Just join an open party and run around zerging while in que for scenarios(which are basically bgs).

All the gear you’d need is earned naturally through pvp bought from capital cities but there are still min maxing options too.

It’s a eu based server though but still plenty of NA pop and the pop in general feels really healthy.

It’s a private server but the only one and the official game is shut down so it actually has a decently sized base built in.

1 Like
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I’d rather play everquest 2 but that game is even worse than wow ( people doing 500 billion damage and 10 trillion dps.)…. I wish I was joking

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I think if all of these were implemented, mage be OP, so i approve. ITS OUR TURN TO BE OP. WEVE BEEN DOG---- IN PVP EVERY PHASE

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I don’t get this mentality tho. Who wants to be OP, so everything you do is because of the class and not your skill. That’s fun for 1 hour. Everytime you get killed by a Boomkin you don’t even care about the dude’s name because you know the class is default win

18

The thing is, would we? What exactly is making it op?

Having mana? heals working as they are intended to? Those are both just fixing things that were already fine but got broken by their sloppy flat dmg nerf in pvp.

36yd range spells with 70% pushback protect? Everyone else has this already.

The amount of actual damage increases that i listed is small…its just Ice Lance, Living Bomb dot, and faster casts - the faster casts are meaningful yes - but without damage buffs we are still hitting for less than booms, shadow, ele per hit, just more quickly and reliably.

Its not like starfire(in sod), wrath, mind blast, lava burst, chain lightning are 3 second casts so its only bringing us in line as far as speed, range, and pushback protect.
And hunters have more range, damage, and no interrupt/pushback.

Also keep in mind every one of those classes is far more durable than mage. Booms with plate level armor, sham with shield, shadow form providing dmg reduction. Hunters in mail with dodge etc. And all but the hunter get heals in their default kit.

The QoL on things like Living Flame so it actually hits its target sometimes, and having the option to pick up Slow would hopefully give us the utility to balance out the fact we get blown apart when touched.

19

I’m not seeing where it would be OP either except adding 50% crit dmg to arcane talent could be too OP combined with the zg gear and icy veins + mqg + -0.5s cast on SFB talent + now base Regeneration. Would literally make us a machine gun SFB 1s cast self healing God for 20 sec. This would be a 100% guaranteed win in any duel whenever you use Deep freeze, so that would have to be adressed somehow

20

Fair, though you’re losing ice barrier so are pretty squishy. If we’re taking mqg into account, trinket on the other side of the deep freeze followed with silence, cs, charge, meathook, feral charge, death coil, earth shock etc and it can still turn around quickly.

It’s actually the same damage you could do today with Spell Power runed and icy veins+mqg, only difference is you would have access to regen (so if the beacon is up and you get to pump, yes big self heals) and either CSP or Brain Freeze, but requires you to be deep arcane and miss ice barrier. IF you stayed deep frost, you actually lose damage unless a brain freeze procs.

Of course its overall better than now, and in the right scenario enables some 1vX but still very counterable imo.

I also support 2 min pvp trinket, which would be good for everyone, and help keep DF from being too oppressive (along with every other CC)

1 Like