No, what invalidates your argument is the fact that even world first and top performing mages from all 3 specs can’t get even close to perfect RoP uptime on most fights even on their best parses, let alone during progression.
The reason RoP is an issue has to do with the way the spell is designed and how its inherent limitations clash with the way virtually all boss fights and their mechanics are designed. Skill only comes into the equation in the sense that players more experienced at the game can perform well in spite of RoP not because of it. Everything about RoP and its design is deeply flawed, including the damage multiplier stacking playstyle it promotes.
The fact that your own RoP uptime is in the low teens just makes your stance laughable. I don’t mean to be harsh but you picked this as your proverbial hill.
If flow was better it would be the default for most people with a tradeoff of a unique utility for good group play with Rune.
Solo performance could then be balanced around flow. You’re not gonna get any changes to runes mechanics if it stays the best option for dps in every situation.
Remove rune, bake some of the damage into TotM, or remove TotM and increase the damage on rune. They’re similar cooldowns and serve similar functions. Increase your damage by X.
Or if you wanna be a masochist just make it that casting TotM links you to the target with a rune increasing the damage and absorbing a portion of you damage. Recasting detonates the mark early and shatters the rune giving you a decaying haste buff (or rapidly regenerates your mana or something along those lines).
I would agree, A well executed shimmer and/or displacement use, SHOULD be all counterplay we need towards movement, as that seems to be its intended use. However that isn’t the case with the ROP boundaries.
RoP is a damage increase over IF for fire and arcane even if you never use the actual button to cast it, meaning if you only allow yourself to benefit from it auto-dropping when you hit your big CD.
With that in mind, would simply removing the button to drop one be a good call? (And obviously buffing base damage of specs accordingly across the board)
I still think IF would need a bit of buffing, but that’d narrow the gap a bit.
I still say kill both options, bake it into our damage profile (base % + additional % during major CDs), and give us a simple utility choice. Hell, off the top of my head: Telekinesis - ranged knockback; Wormhole: teleport to an ally in the same instance; Black Hole (d3 ability - reverse ring of peace); literally anything. Seems like they wanted some slightly increased utility with mass slow / mass poly but neither of them hit the mark. Here’s a chance to add something we might use and enjoy.
This is my preferred solution as well, I’ll selfishly admit. I just don’t want to leave people that like the BIG BURST damage profile that RoP encourages to be left out in the cold.
as someone who like the burst, They could take it in many ways as all the mages have different pain points.
For me its strictly a movement issue. I feel like when they put ROP in the game the intent was to just stand still and reward the caster, I don’t think they had mechanics like we do today to tie it to the caster standing still, that would allow shimmer to work with it.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s a question of narrowing the gap between IF and RoP. If that’s the goal then a better solution would be to simply do away with both of them and boost base damage to compensate for their removal. But Blizzard obviously don’t want to go that route or they would have done it years ago.
If RoP is to remain in the game in has to be adapted to the current reality of the high mobility gameplay necessitated by the way modern boss mechanics are designed. RoP’s stationary design is a relic of a time when casters could reasonably afford to plant themselves and turret the boss. That is simply no longer how any boss fights work.
The only way to make RoP not feel like the frustrating anchor that it is is to make it into a buff. But that doesn’t do anything to address the other side of the issue with abilities like RoP which is that they encourage damage multiplier stacking and an over-reliance on cooldowns. To me that is equally important to deal with and just as much of a problem as RoP’s mobility restrictions.
The more a spec is balanced around these abilities the higher its ramp-up time will be and the more convoluted its rotation becomes. It’s because of RoP that we have talents like RS and Siphon Storm that no one likes and which make rotations confusing, difficult to pull off even once you’ve mastered them, and just generally clunky. No one wants to have to press half a dozen buttons and wait for as many GCDs just to be able to launch into their burst phase.
The way I see it the only way forward is major ability pruning and/or consolidation of all of these support cooldowns so that the only thing left is a major DPS cooldown like Arcane Surge and a minor one like TotM. How the devs arrive at that, whether by merging RoP with AS and RS with TotM or simply by buffing baseline damage doesn’t really matter but something definitely needs to be done to streamline rotations and move away from damage multiplier stacking. Devastation Evokers are a good template on how to do that.
Yeah, that’s my impression as well, part of why I’m looking at possible middle-grounds. And if we can keep the RoP enjoyers happy at the same time, making the best out of a bad situation.
Personally, I don’t even like IF - I hate the alternating damage %'s. It’s just the least offensive option between the two to me.
Again, selfishly speaking, hopefully one day we don’t have to deal with either of them. I’ve just lost hope over the last decade+ so I’m probably more prone to bargaining to be less offended by the ‘choice’ than hoping for out right removal at this point.
In my opinion, rune of power is a great but far too impactful form of skill expression unlike anything else in the game.
Mage by far has the most unique and efficient ways to deal with or completely negate mechanics in this game. We are, infact, so good at not caring about what the mob or boss will do that Blizzard needed to attach a minigame to our class just to keep us awake during prog.
This minigame (how to maximize my time spent in RoP) scratches my brain. I absolutely love the fact that my encounter knowledge allows me to use my kit to the max. I eek out as much damage that I can before blinking out at the last second, stutter step to stand on the very circumfrence while dodging the deadly swirly by an inch, and know exactly when and where to place it after many, many raid nights. And when I (often) fail, this extra bonus challenge gives me fuel to improve.
Many folks don’t see it that way though. They want to do big damage like EVERY other class in the game without a huge chunk of it being tied to a silly minigame (buff/debuff maintenance is a common “minigame” that also has a huge impact, but is often times far easier to manage). The boss’ mechanics are meant to be dodged, not challenged. You’re tired of being forced to figure out and plan encounters 5x more than your fellow players. And that’s understandable.
I love RoP. I would still love it if only gave a 10% damage buff. You can (and should) put the power back in the specs, nerf RoP; but whatever you do, please don’t remove it!
Amen. Raid mechanics these days are just synonymous with movement (stack here; drop that there; dodge the thing). Tying 40%(!!!) of our damage to NOT moving is inevitably going to make for an absolutely miserable experience. I LIKE mechanics. I don’t want to sit here praying to god I’m not targeted because my damage will plummet if I have to run across the room. For other classes it’s a matter of losing a few seconds of dps uptime; for us, it can be a complete make-or-break that you can’t recover from for the rest of the encounter. I find it hard to believe that there’s truly no other way to add complexity to the class besides knowing when to drop your dumb circle of immobility.
I don’t think anyone really likes RoP. Most of those who say that they do simply like the results it provides not the way it functions and would be just as happy if there was a simpler alternative. Now there is another side to this debate and that’s people who take some weird pleasure and pride in being able to play around these frustrating abilities and look down on those of us who can’t or won’t. It’s a source of validation for them but they’re a minority and I for one don’t see why the rest of us should have to suffer so that they can flex their epeens.
I know you love to be condescending and rude to us casual tryhards, but Ive asked MANY top mage streamers and one tricks and they all seem to agree: the skill expression of rune of power is a good thing.
There are people in this world who like to overcome challenges and figure things out. That doesnt make them wierd, or the type to “seek validation”; infact it often makes them a much better person. You should try it some time