I’m not here to say that mages are behind, nerfed or anything like that because I know that mages can perform well. However, I feel that a lot of that performance is locked behind simming and itemizing in a way that it is not for many other classes.
For instance, frost spec is very hit or miss with the AoE ballgame in m+. The fact that frozen orb is actually stupid as far as when the orb actually stops moving is a pain. The fact that blizzard has such a small AoE and in M+ the tanks kite so even when you ‘lead’ a spell you often won’t get the full advantage of both the orb AND blizzard. Proposed changes? Uh. Increasing the dmg of these spells might help but frozen orb ESPECIALLY needs to be more intelligent or perhaps become a targeted ability like Blizzard.
Fire spec is built around building/spreading ignite in M+. Again, like cold this CAN perform well with like perfect itemization. Both cold/fire have very little variances as fara s how you can build.
Arcane spec requires a Ph.D in how to play the video game and is the least forgiving spec. It’s a very S tier spec but it’s not at the same time because it’s basically just not very mobile.
Now maybe I am not playing right. I play frost at a fairly high m+ level. [between 2600/2700.] I cast rop into orb/blizzard with the ice lance spam and even ice nova after the orb for extra crits. Is there any other special secret I am missing to the AoE rotation here?
For single target I play icy veins into orb spam that ice lance and only use flurry after casting frostbolt and then proceed to cast 2 ice lances after. Is there any sort of additional trick to the single target rotation here? [My single target dps is often more consistent and reliable than AoE.]
Overall the class feels less rewarding than some of my alts, such as Druid, Paladin, Rogue. All of which out of the box were producing far more dmg than my mage was. Is my itemization bad? Or does this class really just need buffs because it’s impossible to play perfectly? What gives?
15 Likes
Yeah I’ve found myself getting pretty bummed out playing Fire. Like you said, it’s certainly viable, it just feels way more punishing than satisfying. Scuffing an SKB/having to move from rune (time between packs, raid mechanics, heavy movement for whatever reason) and your damage completely plummets. Very little room for error between decent damage and feeling like dead weight. Again, skill issue, but I wish the variance weren’t so wide at times. While I’d love to see RoP go, even some simple things like extending the SKB buff from 15 to 30+ seconds would go a long way.
9 Likes
Rune of Power suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.
42 Likes
This is every class if you want to perform well.
Mage is the new shaman
Class forgotten by blizzard.
Cant forget to say: RUNE OF POWER SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS
32 Likes
Saying this everywhere I can just to calibrate expectations ~ I wouldn’t expect to see any mage changes at this point until 10.1
They wouldn’t shake things up with our skills/tree to the degree that is necessary this late in the season with how it might affect stat priorities, etc.
If we were going to see anything major in 10.0.7 it wouldve been mentioned by now. Maybe some numerical tuning before then, but not the actual talent/skill reworks we want.
2 Likes
You hit the nail on the head with all of it. It’s so frustrating lining up frozen orb for a big pack then a mob runs toward you and your orb is shortchanged and it doesn’t even make it to the group. While at the same time you having to move out of RoP, break casting and lose substantial dps.
The frozen orb BS has been an issue forever in M+ and I’m frankly done being angry towards the developers not doing anything about class mechanics. Nothing will ever be done, the game has evolved to a point where so much movement is required, it’s not feasible for mages to be dropping that stupid RoP. It’s a chore and it sucks donkey balls. Maybe some sweaties don’t mind but for the average heroic raider or keymaster, at lease those I know, have dropped mage because of RoP. It’s a crutch for all three specs and needs to be re worked.
Things DONT work right. Fire mages are having to spazz out side to side to not miss a hot steak/ combust… how is that normal? somehow pyro feels weak because it’s all you want to proc and feels underwhelming, frost you have to clip a stupid dps window after flurry with a frost bolt and two ice lances, because game and spell design is awful.
The most played classes are those that are easiest play and perform well without much effort. How a prot warrior or paladin or any tank can out dps a pure dps class within 20 ilvls is asinine. Your a tank, that’s what you singed up for… why are tanks able to do so much AOE dps. Bring back threat and CC when it mattered. The game balance is completely skewed at this point. You have tanks self healing ridiculous amounts along with crazy dps. Why play any other class?
On top of all that there are hybrid classes that can fill all roles and can out dps a pure class where there is no option to even heal or tank. I have no issues with rogues, warlocks, hunters topping charts. It’s the other hybrid classes that should not be there.
Blizzard you gotta fix how the mage class plays, it’s brutal these days,
16 Likes
I think you’re 100% right. Any big changes will have to wait for 10.2 or later, if at all. However, with a dev whose 2 braincells aren’t fighting for 3rd place a few numerical changes in the right spot would make the world of difference. Obligatory ROP mention too., because it is by far the worst offender for all 3 specs.
Buffing the Welly or reducing LW bonus to make that a choice.
Increasing the buff time and/or rate at which Snowstorm builds.
Buffs to talents no one takes e.g. CMS, GS, EB, Ray to make them viable. Even swap Ray with Frost Bomb as a pvp talent.
Slight reductions on other talents such as those that buff IL.
Small reduction in power assigned to IV/IP/TV uptimes.
Those changes alone would go a long way to opening up other gameplay options and talent builds for Frost. Keep an eye on things and provide baseline aura buffs/nerfs as required to keep things balanced, but a few minor tweaks could lead to at least 2-3 more competitive builds.
1 Like
FOrb was an issue long before M+. Even in Mists/WoD it would get stuck on things like boss arena terrain, critters, corners of walls etc and just stop. In Legion beta they originally had BF reset Orb cooldown until players complained that it felt awful because of how clunky and useless it was at the time. For a long time players have requested that Orb be placed on the target or like the pvp talent be placed by the player. For what is a core mechanic of the spec, the devs don’t seem to give a toss, though considering it took them 6+ years to make Flurry a charge-based spell it doesn’t surprise me.
I’ll agree that Mage feels off this expansion. Perhaps not as much as BfA/SL but its still not right. Raiding as Frost doesn’t feel horrible, but its just bland. Frostbolt until one of your 2 shinies pings. Yay. M+ is where Frost feels like it actively hates players. Orb>Blizzard feels ok, but sitting there spamming a 2-target-capped IL outside of that feels bad. You have no real burst or big shiny AoE, and numbers aside it doesn’t feel good to play. My sub rogue on the other hand, while having only 2.5 aoe abilities feels pretty solid to play in dungeons.
5 Likes
I think it’s the fact that as a frost mage you’re constantly casting spells and yet your actual damage is laclustre compared to other classes/specs that produce much better numbers with much less effort.
Ice Lance spam is so mind numbingly boring to play.
8 Likes
I don’t think we can expect anything major even after 10.1. The problems with the mage specs are all structural and so deeply ingrained that they would require a complete overhaul and moving away from their dependence on cooldowns and damage multiplier stacking. I am not sure the devs even know how to go about doing this or if indeed they want to.
Personally, my patience has run out. I haven’t logged in at all last week (although part of the reason for that is the new HP game, lol) and I am seriously contemplating unsubscribing again. And I don’t think I am alone or that Blizzard don’t know this is a problem if the rushed introduction of the Trading Post is anything to go by. There’s just not enough content to keep me engaged and atm I don’t enjoy playing any spec enough to try and push higher content with.
It’s a pity because the expansion had a lot of potential but when the tires hit the road it fell flat in too many ways.
6 Likes
10.1 will be very telling at the least for how much attention we will get. I’m being optimistic for now because we saw nothing in 10.0.5 and looking the same for 10.0.7.
If there’s a big rework coming it’ll be 10.1
The thing that I think I’m most disappointed in with Dragonflight is how I naively expected the new talent trees to actually offer different ways to play each spec. Instead they were so poorly designed that not only did they pigeonhole us into one style of gameplay but gave us play styles which were clunky, convoluted, requiring 3 action bars to use, and relatively unenjoyable for me to play.
Balance druid, shadow priest, all three mage specs … tried them all and not playing the alts I used to love simply because the rotations feel awful to me.
14 Likes
I find playing a caster in Dragonflight is not about playing the spec you like the most, but finding the one you hate the least.
18 Likes
I’m fine if they need to wait to 10.1 to make any kind of changes…
I’m significantly less fine with a lack of communication or something saying “Hey we know you’d like a little bit of love, can you talk to us and we’ll see what we can do?”
6 Likes
My 2c… they should just go all in on the ROP, IP/TV and SKB playstyles. Make this baseline, and then focus the talent trees around that.
Having so many non viable talents just makes our trees bloated with dead talents. Blizz, give it up already. Remove hypothermia, comet storm, glacial spike, incanters flow, etc. Put stuff that makes the current meta more forgiving in this situation or that.
4 Likes
True statement.
Was kind of surprised but kind of not surprised that mages are getting no changes so far on the 10.0.7 PTR.
Seems mages are in a great place in the eyes of the devs.
2 Likes
This 100% - just an acknowledgment that they’re looking into it would make me feel less stupid for not having rerolled by now.
2 Likes
Well hopefully you also Icy Veins in AOE, since one of the major problems with people is often not using cds enough, you should essentially be pressing everything on cd unless the mobs are dead already. Aside from that, frost doesn’t have anything like “oh I missed it” its mainly a collection of small mistakes like not using blizzard/rune on cd and using unempowered ice lances instead of fillers.
1 Like
OP, check out Manather’s YouTube. Watching you has helped me alot with my frost roation. Great vids.
1 Like